LIBRAR Y OF ^CONGRE SS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



LECTURES 



ON 



APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION IN THE 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND 



BEING 

AN EXPOSITION AND APPLICATION OF THE TEACHING 
OF THE LATE 

REV. ARTHUR WEST HADDAN, B.D. 

M 

(SOMETIME FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD, AND RECTOR OF 

BARTON- OX-THE-HEATH) 

IN HIS TREATISE ON THAT SUBJECT 
(RIVINGTONS, 1 869) 



BY 

WILLIAM JONES SEABURY, D.D. 

RECTOR OF THE CHURCH OF THE ANNUNCIATION, AND CHARLES AND 

ELIZABETH LUDLOW PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY AND 

LAW IN THE GENERAL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, NEW YORK 



IWAV • 

NEW YORK' 

CROTHERS AND KORTH 

246 Fourth Avenue 

1893 

T— 



.H33 5V 



The Library 
of Congress 

WASHINGTON 

— I— f 



Copyright, 1893, by 
CROTHERS & KORTH 



Press of J. J. Little & Co. 
Astor Place, New York. 



PREFACE. 

The treatise of the late Mr. Haddan, entitled 
Apostolical Succession in the Church of England, 
has been one of the text-books in the department 
of Ecclesiastical Polity and Law in the General 
Theological' Seminary for many years. It has 
been used with a considerable measure of satisfac- 
tion, so far as could be ascertained, on the part 
of the students, and with an increasing apprecia- 
tion of its value on the part of the professor. Con- 
sidered as a statement of the doctrine of which it 
treats, and as an aid to those who seek to under- 
stand 'it, and to disentangle it from the misconcep- 
tions in which, by manifold controversies, it has 
been involved, it is singularly well adapted for a 
text-book— a book, that is to say, which a teacher 
may advantageously use as a text for the instruc- 
tion which he desires to impart. It is characterized, 
too, not less by its candour and moderation, than by 
the comprehensive and exact learning, and the re- 
markable power of condensation, which doubtless 
led the late Dean Church to refer to it as the final 
authority on the subject. 1 

But although first published so recently as 1869, 
it has been found of late a matter of some difficulty 
for the students, even with that observance of tra- 
dition to which they are proverbially addicted, to 
obtain a sufficient number of copies for use in the 
course ; and in the present year, there appearing 

1 Quoted in the notice of Haddan in Stephens and Lee's 
Dictionary of National Biography. 



4 PREFACE. 

no likelihood of the issue of another edition of the 
work, the alternative was forced upon me, either to 
abandon its use altogether, or to give such lectures 
on it as would convey to the students at least a part 
of the valuable treasure which it contains. In the 
endeavour to carry out the latter plan, I subjected 
the book to a careful analysis intended to present, 
as far as possible, in an affirmative way, teaching 
which, in the author's method, is to a considerable 
extent negatively and defensively stated : and, in 
following the scheme thus indicated, I endeavoured 
to express the meaning of the author as I under- 
stood it ; using his language or my own, as seemed 
most suitable to the purpose which I entertained ; 
quite freely intermingling with the author's words 
my own turns of expression, and comments ex- 
planatory or additional — intent only upon impart- 
ing such knowledge of the subject as, with the 
instruction of the author, and others in the same 
line, might be in this way conveniently applied. 

Nearing the conclusion of this endeavour I was 
urged to the publication of the lectures, on the 
ground of their probable usefulness not only to 
those who could not obtain the book, but also to 
some who might be so happy as to possess it ; for, 
with all its value, it is a book which cannot by 
many be clearly apprehended without labour, and 
which is on that account not unfit to be interpreted. 
In assenting to this request I have had no other 
wish than such as is implied in the reason assigned 
for it. I should earnestly deprecate the imputa- 
tion of having endeavoured either to improve upon 
the book or to furnish a substitute for it. My 
effort, rather, has been to supplement and extend 
the usefulness of a work to which I feel myself 
under lasting obligation. 

W. J. S. 

Annunciation Rectory, New York, 
Feast of the Annunciation , 1893. 



BIOGRAPHICAL MEMORANDA 

NOTED FROM 

STEPHENS AND LEE'S DICTIONARY OF 
NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY. 

Arthur West Haddan was born August 31, 
1816. He entered Brasenose, Oxford, 1834; was 
elected Scholar of Trinity, June 15, 1835 ; gradu- 
ated B. A., 1837, afterward taking the degrees of 
M. A. and B. D. ; and became a Fellow of Trinity 
College in 1839. 

Haddan was deeply affected by the Oxford move- 
ment, and much influenced by Isaac Williams, then 
a tutor in Trinity. The special effect of the move- 
ment in that college was to lead its more distin- 
guished advocates to the study of history, in order 
to maintain the historical position and claims of 
the Church. From the first, Haddan never swerved 
from his loyalty to the Church, or faltered in de- 
fence of its Apostolic character. 

Ordained deacon in 1840, he acted for about a 
year as curate to John Henry Newman at the 
Church of St. Mary the Virgin, in Oxford. He 
was ordained priest in 1842, and about this time 
engaged in work for the Anglo-Catholic Library, 
editing, with great care and learning, five volumes 
of BramhaH's works, and six volumes of Thorn- 
dike's works, in that collection. He also brought 
out, in connection with Professor Stubbs after- 



6 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMORANDA. 

ward Bishop of Oxford, the first volume of the 
great work, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents, 
founded on the collections of Spelman and Wilkins. 
His treatise on Apostolical Succession in the Church 
of England came out in 1869; and two editions 
appear to have followed his death, one in 1879 
and the other in 1883. Though remembered 
chiefly for works on ecclesiastical history, his at- 
tainments were also great in biblical criticism, 
theology, philosophy, and classical scholarship. 
A man of singular modesty and unselfishness, he 
never obtained preferment, save to the poorly en- 
dowed living from his college, and the barren title 
of honorary Canon of Worcester. His devotion to 
study, and the toils of his literary pursuits, did not 
prevent him from engaging with earnestness in his 
pastoral work at Barton-on-the-Heath, to which he 
was much attached. He died February 8, 1873, 
aet. fifty-six. 



ANALYSIS 



PARI' L 

APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION AS A DOCTRINE; AND AS 
MAINTAINED IN HOLY SCRIPTURE, IN 
THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH, AND 
IN THE CHURCH OF ENG- 
LAND : AND HEREIN, 

LECTURE I. 

IMPORTANCE OF THE DOCTRINE. 

PAGE 

I. Statement of the Doctrine, . . . .16 
II. Grounds upon which the Doctrine Rests, . 16 

III. Argument, ........ 17 

1. Apostolical Succession essential to the being of 

the Church. 

2. Individual assent to the doctrine essential to the 

full acceptance of the faith of Christ. 

IV. Grounds on which the Doctrine is Assailed, 18 

1. As meaning too little. 

2. As meaning too much. 

V. Religious Antagonism Indicated by the Ob- 
jections, 18 

VI. In what View the Doctrine Important to 

be Studied, . 19 

VII. The Issue Involved, 19 

VIII. Tendency of the Issue, 19 



8 ANALYSIS. 

PAGE 

IX. Implications Involved in the Doctrine, . 20 

1. The continued existence and need of super- 

natural gifts. 

2. That these supernatural gifts are divinely in- 

trusted to a corporate body. 

3. That in the Church is a divinely constituted 

ministry. 

4. That this ministry receives its authority from 

God by transmission through those who have 
themselves received it. 

5. That the only authorized transmitters of this 

authority are the Bishops. 

6. That the transmission is unbroken in its con- 

tinuity from the Apostles. 

X. Unity of this Scheme, 23 

XI. Consequence of Rejection of the Doctrine, 23 

XII. General Tone of Dissent now as Con- 
trasted with that of the Seventeenth 
Century, 24 

XIII. Circumstances of the Present Day Requir- 
ing Special Attention to the Doctrine, 24 



LFXTURE II. 

OBJECTIONS TO THE DOCTRINE AS HELD BY THE 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 

I. Objections Admitting the Doctrine and Deny- 
ing the Succession 26 

1. Roman Catholics object : 

(a) On alleged historical grounds. 

(b) On legal grounds. 

(c) On captious grounds. 

2. Eastern objections. 

II. Objections Denying the Doctrine without 

Admitting the Fact, 27 

1. Various theories of denial. 

2. Grounds on which these theories rest. 



ANALYSIS. g 

LECTURE III. 

APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION AS A DOCTRINE. 

PAGE 

I. The Ministry in Relation to its Objects, . 29 

1. The intervention of the ministry a help and not 

a hindrance. 

2. Authorized form essential to the preservation of 

vital religion, not a substitute for it. 

II. The Ministry in Relation to its Subjects, . 30 

III. The Ministry in its Relation to the Church, 32 

IV. The Ministry in its Relation to those to 

whom it is Wanting, ..... 33 

V. The Ministry as Conditioned by outward 

Continuity from the Apostles, . . 34 

1. Probability that God would connect His grace 

with a series of facts. 

2. The sufficient plainness of the fact of Apostoli- 

cal Succession. 

VI. The Ministry being not a Physical Neces- 
sity, but an Imposition of Moral Obli- 
gation, its General Authority cannot 
be Impaired by Exceptional Cases of 
Apparent Exemption from its Operation, 36 

VII. The Doctrine Depends upon the Evidence 
of its Authority, not upon our Concep- 
tion of its Consequences, . . . .36 



LECTURE IV. 
apostolical succession scriptural. 

I. New Testament Usage of E7ti6xo7to^ and 

npe6fivTtpoS, ...... 37 



io ANAL YSIS. 

PAGE 

II. Nature of Scriptural Evidence, . . .39 

1. Comparison with evidence for the doctrine of 

the Trinity. 

2. Relation of Scripture to the Church. 

3. Relation of doctrine to dogma. 

4. Evidence of incidental allusion. 

III. Polity in what Sense gradually Developed, 40 
IV. Source of Power of Rulers, . . . .40 



LECTURE V. 

HISTORICAL POSITION OF THE DOCTRINE. 

I. Nature of Patristic Testimony as to this 

Doctrine, 41 

1. St. Clement of Rome. 

2. St. Ignatius. 

II. Weakness of Negative Allegations, . . 45 

III. Comparison of this Evidence with that for 

Canon of New Testament and Creed, . 46 

IV. Presumptions from later History, . . 47 



LECTURE VI. 

APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 

I. Statement of Doctrine, 50 

II. Evidence, ........ 51 

1. Articles. 

2. Ritual forms. 

3. Reformation documents. 



ANALYSIS. ii 

PAGE 

III. Allegations to the Contrary, . . .56 

IV. Acts Claimed to be Authoritative, . .57 
V. Individual Opinion, ,58 



PART II. 

THE FACT AND CANONICAL VALIDITY OF THE APOS- 
TOLICAL SUCCESSION IN ENGLAND; AND HEREIN, 



LECTURE I. 



THE FACT OF PARKER S CONSECRATION. 

I. Presumption in Favour of Possession with 

Apparent Regularity, . . . .61 

II. Absence of Evidence Adequate to Over- 
throw the Presumption, . . . .64 

III. Positive Evidence of Fact, . . . .66 

1. Allusions of contemporaneous writers. 

(a) Zurich letters. 

(b) Machyn's diary. 

2. Legal cavils of opposers. 

3. Parker's testimony. 

4. Public records. 



LECTURE II. 

CONSECRATION of barlow. 

I. Position of Barlow in the Succession, . . 69 
II. Evidence, 70 



12 ANALYSIS. 

PAGE 

III. Circumstances Refuting Presumption from 

Want of Record, 71 

1. Lateness of objection. 

2. Obligation to be consecrated. 

3. Want of motive to act without consecration. 

4. Carelessness of the registrar. 

5. Carelessness of other registrars. 

6. Comparison of evidences. 

IV. WORTHLESSNESS OF THE OBJECTION, SUPPOSING 

it were True, 73 

V. The Consecrators of Parker duly Repre- 
sented the English Church, . . .74 



LECTURE III. 

THE CANONICAL VALIDITY OF ENGLISH ORDERS. 

I. The Author's Treatment of the Subject, . 76 

II. Objections Sentimental and Declamatory, . 77 

1 . Possibility of unbaptized Anglican Bishops. 

2. Want of reverence in Anglican Clergy. 

3. Want of belief by Anglicans in Anglican orders. 

4. Alleged condemnation of Anglican orders by 

Roman Church, from the time of the discard- 
ing of Papal supremacy. 

LECTURE IV. 

GENERAL VIEW OF ROMAN OBJECTIONS TO 
ANGLICAN ORDERS — CONTINUED. 

I. Characteristic of Objections of a more 

Argumentative Kind, 81 

II. Omission of certain Words and Ceremonies 

from Ordinal, . . . . .81 

1. In ordination of Priests. 

2. In Episcopal ordination. 



ANALYSIS. 13 

PAGE 

III. Failure of Intention, 84 

1. True and false doctrine of Intention. 

2. Evidence as to the Intention of the English 

Church. 



LECTURE V. 

GENERAL VIEW OF ROMAN OBJECTIONS TO 
ANGLICAN ORDERS — CONTINUED. 

I. Want of Jurisdiction, 96 

1. As not being derived from the Pope. 

2. As being derived from the Crown. 

II. Invalidated by Heresy or Schism, . . 106 

1. Irrelevance of the objection. 

2. Actual state of the case. 

III. Want of Infallibility, in 

1. Meaning of the objection. 

2. Eastern version of the objection. 

3. Assumption involved in these objections. 

4. The grounds of the sufficient authority of the 

message committed to the Anglican Clergy. 



lectures on 
Apostolical Succession. 

PART I. 

Apostolical Succession as a Doctrine ; and 
as Maintained in Holy Scripture, in the 
Primitive Church, and in the Church of 
England. 

LECTURE I. 

(Chapter I. pp. 1-26.) 

IMPORTANCE OF THE DOCTRINE. 

I. Statement of the doctrine. II. Grounds on which it rests. 
III. Argument. I. Essential to the being of the Church. 
2. Individual assent essential to full acceptance of 
faith. IV. Grounds on which doctrine is assailed. I. 
As meaning too little. 2. As meaning too much. V. Re- 
ligious antagonism indicated by objections. VI. In what 
view important to be studied. VII. The issue involved. 
VIII. Tendency of the issue. IX. Implications involved 
in the doctrine. 1. The continued existence and need 
of supernatural gifts. 2. These divinely intrusted to a 
corporate body. 3. That in the Church is a divinely 
constituted ministry. 4. That this ministry receives its 
authority from God by transmission through those who 
have received it. 5. The only authorized transmitters 
the Bishops. 6. The transmission unbroken in continu- 
ity from the Apostles. X. Unity of this scheme. XI. 
Consequence of rejection of the doctrine. XII. General 
tone of dissent now as contrasted with that of seventeenth 
century. XIII. Circumstances of the present day requir- 
ing special attention to the doctrine. 



16 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

I. Statement of the Doctrine. 

The doctrine of Apostolical Succession means, 
that, according to the institution of Christ, a minis- 
try ordained in due form by Episcopal succession 
from the Apostles is an integral part of that visi- 
ble Church to which the disciples of Christ are, by 
His will, to be joined. It implies, further, that the 
ministry so ordained is not a merely external office 
convenient for government, but involves also the 
transmission of special gifts of grace for the carry- 
ing on of the supernatural work of Christ by His 
Spirit — [involves, that is to say, the grace of 
order ; by which is to be understood the gift of the 
Holy Spirit conferring upon the ordained : (i) the 
power or ability to impart or minister the grace 
merited by Christ for man ; (2) the authority to im- 
part such grace in the means of Christ's appoint- 
ment ; (3) the supernatural aid requisite to the 
efficient and sanctifying discharge of this trust.] 1 

II. Grounds upon which the Doctrine Rests. 

The doctrine so stated rests upon the commission 
given by our Lord to His Apostles, [which is evi- 
denced, first, by the various charges of our Lord to 
the first holders of the Apostolic office, involving 
its authority and perpetuity ; and, secondly, by the 
acts of the Apostles in providing for the transmis- 
sion of orders. It does not come within the scope 
of this work to discuss in detail the scriptural evi- 
dences of the Apostolic commission, although in a 
subsequent chapter the author treats of the nature 

1 Statements for the substance of which, the author of the 
work treated of is not responsible have been generally — i.e., 
where they seemed of sufficient importance — included, as 
above, within brackets, although sometimes the author and 
the commentator are so intermingled as to make this discrim- 
ination impossible. — W. J. S. 



I.] IMPORTANCE OF THE DOCTRINE. 17 

of that evidence, and of the method by which it 
may be properly apprehended and used. It is suf- 
ficient for the purpose of the present statement of 
the case to indicate generally the ground on which 
the doctrine rests, leaving the student to ascertain 
from the abundance of other treatises on the sub- 
ject — e.g., Archbishop Potter on Church Govern- 
merit, Bishop H. U. Onderdonk's tract Episcopacy 
Tested by Scripture — in what manner it is substan- 
tiated by Holy Scripture.] 

III. Argument. 

1. Apostolic Succession Essential to the 
Being of the Church. — If they only can impart 
the gifts of God who have received them for that 
purpose, and if the authority to transmit the grace 
of the ministry belonged from the beginning solely 
to the Apostles to whom Christ gave it, then the 
authority belongs neither to the Church as a body, 
nor to the secular power, nor to individual claim- 
ants, but to those who have received it by that suc- 
cession through which the Apostles transmitted it ; 
and if this succession be, by Apostolic authority 
under Divine guidance and direction, lodged in 
trust for its perpetuation in the hands of an order 
of rulers succeeding to the Apostolic power of 
ordination and oversight of subordinate orders as 
well as of the disciples in general, then no exercise 
of that function can be authorized in those subor- 
dinate orders more than in the disciples — so that a 
Church is so, at any rate in its integrity, only when 
it possesses this ministry of Apostolic succession. 

2. Individual Assent to this Doctrine Essen- 
tial to full Acceptance of the Faith. — And 
although this doctrine be not in the same sense de 
fide as, e.g. , the doctrine of the Holy Trinity or 
that of the Atonement ; and although it is in itself 



18 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

a subordinate portion of the doctrine of the Church 
and Sacraments ; and although it may in this or 
that case be impossible for individuals to bring 
themselves within reach of what is part of an 
external and positive institution, and real necessity 
supersedes positive law — yet if this succession be 
indeed part of the means of grace appointed by 
Christ Himself through His Apostles it plainly can- 
not be wilfully disregarded without sin ; or lost, still 
less put aside, without risking the loss or diminu- 
tion of the gifts and promises which are bound up 
with it in that case by Divine appointment. Even 
external institutions, in short, if ordained by Christ 
as a means of grace, cannot safely be wilfully dis- 
regarded by His disciples. 

IV. Grounds on which the Doctrine is 
Assailed. 

i. As meaning too little. — It is said that this 
Apostolic succession is a merely mechanical piece 
of external order — useless if an inward call to the 
ministry is felt to exist, a mockery if it is not ; or 
that it is a purely historical fact or assertion, of no 
moral significance, which is uncharitably insisted on 
by its advocates ; or that it is a substitution of 
outward form for inward union with Christ. 

2. As meaning too much. — On the other hand 
the doctrine is scouted as drawing with it a whole 
system of teaching which is the reverse of insig- 
nificant ; and as bound up with the principle of a 
Church divinely appointed, and with the whole 
range of what is briefly called Sacramental doctrine. 

V. The Religious Antagonism Indicated by 
the Objections. 

These objections indicate a religious antagonism 
opposing distinctly certain theories to the princi- 



i.] IMPORTANCE OF THE DOCTRINE. 19 

pies on which the Church is based and works. 
The theory of the obligation of each individual to 
make a Creed for himself is opposed to the prin- 
ciple that the Church by God's appointment fur- 
nishes an essential element of the rightful instruc- 
tion and guidance of human reason ; and the 
notion of union with Christ through an assumed 
inward consciousness, testified solely by the feel- 
ings of the individual, is opposed to the principle 
of union with Christ through union with His 
Church, by the instrumentality of Sacraments of 
His appointment. 

VI. In what View the Doctrine Important. 

The doctrine, then, is to be studied not as a 
mere matter of antiquarian research or human expe- 
diency, but as touching the reasonable and com- 
fortable certainty of God's gifts of truth and grace, 
and as involved in the duty of humble obedience 
in the seeking of those gifts where God has lodged 
them. 

VII. The Issue Involved. 

For the issue involved in the denial of this doc- 
trine is not merely whether this or that order of 
external government has the greater advantage in 
point of antiquity, or continuity, or utility ; but, 
beyond this, whether the Church has been divinely 
appointed to be primarily and ordinarily the chan- 
nel of the supernatural gifts of God, instead of the 
conditions of salvation being left to rest absolutely 
within the will of the individual soul. 

VIII. Tendency of the Issue. 

And accordingly this issue, the outgrowth of that 
individualism which evacuates all outward acts or 



20 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

institutions of every other value than that of exter- 
nal signs or motives of the man's own will, leads 
in the long run, however for a while unintended or 
repudiated, to a serious risk, at the least, of the 
denial or depreciation of supernatural truth and 
grace altogether. 

IX. Implications Involved in the Doctrine. 

Consider, then, a little more in detail what is 
implied in the belief in an Apostolic ministry ; and 
how far, on the other hand, the belief in such a 
ministry is required, in order to the safety of those 
plainly soul-concerning doctrines which are implied 
by it. The particular fact indicated by the words 
lies, no doubt, in small compass. But it is the 
complement, and, as it seems, in actual fact, the 
condition of a whole body of truth, which affects 
the entire treatment of the Christian life from its 
beginning to its earthly close ; viz., of all that is 
involved in the doctrine of the Holy Catholic and 
Apostolic Church, and, more remotely, even of 
the entire doctrine of grace. For although many, 
struggling to retain the substance while discard- 
ing the form, hold parts of these doctrines, shun- 
ning the obligation to accept them as a whole, yet 
they do so, it should seem, by the force of tradi- 
tion, or because the belief of the Church around 
them externally upholds their own belief. Succes- 
sion of order, though a strong outward safeguard, 
is not, it is true, an infallible pledge, either of suc- 
cession of faith or of retention of spiritual life ; 
yet those who have lacked the Apostolic ministry 
have commonly, in the lapse of time, impaired both. 
And if on the one side undue worship of the 
Blessed Virgin has crept in, in spite of Church 
organization — marred, however, by the assumption 
of Papal infallibility — certainly on the other side 



I.] IMPORTANCE OF THE DOCTRINE. 21 

Naturalism appears to be the inevitable issue of the 
uncontrolled results of casting off the Church alto- 
gether. There is implied, then, in the doctrine of 
Apostolic Succession : 

1. The Continued Existence and Need of 
Supernatural Gifts. — Christianity is not merely a 
philosophy, or a moral system only ; nor is it a self- 
caused change of feeling or will, and nothing more : 
but beyond all these, and, indeed, as the cause and 
foundation of all of them, it is, first, a revelation 
of supernatural truths which claim not opinion, 
but faith ; and, next, a supernatural dealing with 
the soul, whereby man is transformed by God's 
work, with his own will, into a new being. Belief 
in an Apostolic ministry implies, then, belief in a 
supernatural revelation of truth and in a super- 
natural gift of spiritual life, belief in the grace of 
God — a belief held, no doubt, by thousands who try 
to dissever it from outward ordinances, yet which 
loses in that case, by inevitable law, its sobriety, 
its certainty, and in due time its reality also ; and 
which in such case is apt to be limited to fancied 
occasions and self-made sacraments, to the moment 
of supposed conversion, the excitement of startling 
preaching, and the like ; and which thus reasserts 
in a bastard form the very principle which it con-, 
demns. 

2. These Supernatural Gifts Divinely In- 
trusted to a Corporate Body. — These gifts of 
grace are obtained ordinarily and primarily by the 
individual Christian as in union with Christ through 
His Church ; which, therefore, is not a /oluntary 
association, nor a department of the State, nor an 
invisible abstraction, but a divinely constituted 
visible body — the witness of truth and the channel 
of grace. 

3. That in the Church is a Divinely Consti- 
tuted Ministry. — The doctrine implies, further, 



22 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

that in the Church there is a divinely constituted 
ministry ; that the body corporate acts through an 
order of men [qualified to represent it, not as com- 
missioned by the body, either as authorized by 
God to give such commission, or still less by virtue 
of an imaginary power resulting from the idle dream 
of a fancied identity of the Church with Christ who 
is its Head and not its subservient member, but] 
set apart by God's ordinance from their fellow Chris- 
tians as ministers of the spiritual gifts intrusted 
to it ; stewards of the mysteries of God, to give to 
each one his portion in due season; an order of 
men who are not simply almoners, lecturers, mouth- 
pieces of united worship, professional teachers, but 
ministers of the Word and Sacraments, possessing 
exclusively the commission of Christ. 

4. That this Ministry Receives its Author- 
ity from God by Transmission through those 
who have themselves Received it. — The 
work of the ministry is not their work, but God's 
work through them. Their qualification, therefore, 
must be from God Himself, and in the way of His 
appointment ; viz., from those who have by commis- 
sion or succession been qualified to confer it. They 
who give must first have received ; and so belief 
in an Apostolical ministry involves belief in the 
grace of orders — i.e., in the necessity and spiritual 
effectiveness of a proper formal ordination. 

5. The only Authorized Transmitters the 
Bishops. — Upon Scriptural and historical grounds 
we are further limited to the belief that the office 
of ministering the grace thus rendered necessary 
belongs to that special class of the ministry to 
whom the Apostles gave it ; viz., to Bishops as suc- 
cessors in the Apostolic office. 

6. The Transmission Unbroken in Continu- 
ity from the Apostles Either that, or a new 

commission from God creating afresh the gift of 



I.] IMPORTANCE OF THE DOCTRINE. 23 

Christ ; which would be — not only without evi- 
dence, but — inconsistent with the idea of a gift 
originally imparted once for all, and contrary also 
to Divine analogies in nature and in grace, wherein 
the work of God, initiated once for all by His 
creative word, is to fulfil its appointed task thence- 
forward by the power then inaugurated. 

X. Unity of this Scheme. 

All this scheme of doctrine holds together as of 
one piece. It means — without Bishops, no Presby- 
ters ; without Bishops and Presbyters, no legitimate 
certainty of Sacraments ; without Sacraments, no 
certain union with the mystical Body of Christ ; 
without this, no certain union with Christ ; and 
without that union, no salvation. 

Yet with these necessary provisoes at every step, 
by the very nature of the moral laws and attributes 
of God : first, that these outward things may be 
had ; secondly, that due allowance be made for 
ignorance, prejudice, or necessity ; thirdly, that the 
system be regarded as subservient and ministering 
to a true faith, a living religion, and a hearty love 
of Christ in the soul. 

XI. Consequence of Rejection of this 
Doctrine. 

Not only does the holding of Apostolic succes- 
sion involve the holding of this whole scheme of 
doctrine, but the reverse also seems true, that those 
who do not hold this are almost necessarily led on 
to reject the larger portion at least of the doctrine 
involved in it. 

A Divine commission is essential to the minis- 
tration of Sacraments which contain Divine gifts, 
and the denial of the Divine commission leads 



24 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

naturally to the denial of the grace of the Sacra- 
ments. 

And, conversely, Zwinglian doctrine in regard to 
the Sacraments implies also a conception of the 
Church that reduces it to a merely outward cooper- 
ation of Christians for the sake of expediency, and 
regards each Christian soul as in such sense in 
separate union with Christ as to require no union 
with His Church. 



XII. General Tone of Dissent now as Con- 
trasted WITH THAT OF THE SEVENTEENTH 

Century. 

The contrast shows plainly, as a matter of histor- 
ical fact, that loss of the ministry has been fol- 
lowed by loss of doctrine. 

Many portions of the works of the great non- 
conformist writers of the earlier period would now 
sound to their followers as if from some obnoxious 
Church writer of the present. Even Wesley is full 
of doctrine which would be condemned as Tracta- 
rian, if Methodists met with it not knowing it to be 
his. 

Not only have Sacraments been evacuated of 
their supernatural power, but it is questionable 
whether the very conception of the supernatural 
working of the Spirit of God in the soul is not 
seriously weakened in the popular religionism 
which disclaims Church doctrine. 

XIII. Circumstances Requiring Present 
Attention to the Doctrine. 

Increased Church feeling in recent years has 
given to this subject renewed importance. The 
transition from traditional acceptance to pro- 
nounced assertion has challenged the grounds of 



I.] IMPORTANCE OF THE DOCTRINE. 25 

belief. The prevalent longing for unity, [which 
seems to develope in proportion to the increase 
of a spurious and uncharitable liberality, and] 
which leads to the desire to be rid of anything 
which appears like a barrier to that unity ; and the 
social interests, intermarriages, and relationships 
which tend toward the perpetual blinking and 
smoothing over of differences, combine to call for 
the demonstration of the ministry of Apostolic suc- 
cession, as the basis of the only unity that is such 
in fact as well as in name, as in itself the exponent 
of true charity, the bond of peace preserving the 
unity of the Spirit. 

And, again, the increased facilities of intercourse 
which we have in this day, bringing the whole 
world near together, make it the more necessary to 
understand the value of our own position in pro- 
portion as we become more familiar with that of 
others, and are brought more closely into contact 
with those who hold more or less perfectly, and 
with more or less distinctness, the principles to 
which we owe allegiance ; while in England, in 
view of the probability of disestablishment, and in 
the United States, where the severance from the 
civil system is already complete, the Church, in 
mere self-defence, must needs fall back upon the 
ground of its own independent and Divine authority. 



26 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 



LECTURE II. 

(Chapter II. p. 27.) 

OBJECTIONS TO THE DOCTRINE AS HELD BY THE 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 

I. Objections admitting the doctrine and denying the succes- 
sion. 1. Roman Catholics object : (a) on alleged historical 
grounds ; (b) on legal grounds ; (c) on captious grounds. 
2. Eastern objections. II. Objections denying the doc- 
trine without admitting the fact. I. Various theories of 
denial. 2. Grounds on which these theories rest. 

I. Objections Admitting the Doctrine and 
Denying the Succession. 

1. Roman Catholic Objections. — Roman 
Catholics hold the doctrine of Apostolic Succes- 
sion, though corruptly in connection with Papal 
dispensations in the matter of ordination, and with 
theories of Papal infallibility, and in regard to the 
relation of Papal to Episcopal power. But as re- 
gards the English Church they deny the succession. 
They do this : (a) on alleged historical grounds, re- 
lating to the bare fact of the ordination of those 
through whom the succession is traced ; (b) on legal 
grounds, that is to say on grounds which, suppos- 
ing the fact of ordination to be proved, affect the 
lawfulness of the acts of those who have received 
such ordination, basing their objections upon the 
principle of the invalidity of schismatical or hereti- 
cal orders, or on the claim of insufficiency of form 
or intention, or on the allegation of want of mis- 
sion ; and (c) on captious grounds, e.g., that Eng- 
lish priests lack the mark of sacerdotal caste that 
is indelibly impressed upon the whole being of a 
Roman priest, or that the doctrine of succession 



II.] OBJECTIONS TO THE DOCTRINE. 27 

is not held by English Churchmen, or that some 
clergymen have been careless about baptism, etc. 

2. Eastern Objections. — Eastern theologians 
object on analogous, but not altogether identical, 
grounds. Both East and West demand not only 
transmission of office, but that the office transmitted 
shall include such doctrine of the Eucharistic sacri- 
fice as they themselves hold. Easterns insist also 
that the doctrine of the infallibility of General 
Councils is bound up with the doctrine of the suc- 
cession. 

II. Objections Denying the Doctrine with- 
out Admitting the Fact. 

The opposite class of objectors supersede all 
need of inquiry into the fact, by denying the doc- 
trine ; and this denial proceeds upon 

1. Various Theories. — As, for example, that 
the power of appointing ministers resides in the 
general body of Christian men, and needs no trans- 
mission ; that inward consciousness of fitness in the 
individual is his sufficient commission, outward 
appointment being merely matter of decent order ; 
or that the ministry needs no special gift — having 
indeed none to confer — but is limited to moral in- 
strumentality. Such, in the main, apart from mere 
Erastianism, 1 which recognizes no spiritual minis- 
try at all, are the views of those who have sepa- 
rated themselves, and of those in the Church who 
sympathize with them. 

1 " One unhappy effect of the extravagant claims, before 
the Reformation, in behalf of the spiritual power, was to 
beget a reaction afterwards towards the opposite extreme. 
Hence the Hobbian, or, as it is more commonly called 
{enphonice gratia, I suppose, for the infidel of Malmesbury 
was its sturdiest patron, and his name fits it better than that 
of the German physician), the Erastian theory, which re- 
gards the Church as the mere creature of the state." — Sea- 
BURy's Continuity of the Church of England (p. 50). 



28 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

Even the many varying Presbyterian views of 
succession seem now pretty nearly to have resolved 
themselves into one broad opposition between an 
Episcopal succession on the one hand, as opposed 
to an election by the congregation together with 
an inward call ; and again between a belief in the 
spiritual power of the ministry, as distinguished 
from a purely human conception of the office. 

2. Grounds on which these Theories Rest. 
—And such naturalistic views rest partly on alleged 
historical facts ; as, that the primitive Church 
either had no apostolically ordained government, or 
that, if it had, it was Presbyterian ; or that English 
reformers denied the necessity of ordination, or of 
Episcopal ordination, and that when they spoke 
of three orders, and provided three distinct forms of 
ordination, they meant all the while two — holding 
Bishops and Priests the same ; or that the English 
Church has acknowledged Presbyterian orders. 

But besides these professedly historical assertions 
the objections rest on principles of a deeper kind ; 
e.g., the right of the immediate union of the indi- 
vidual soul with Christ ; direct access to Christ as 
the privilege of all believers ; an inward call as the 
only essential qualification for the ministry ; the 
transmission of the faith as the one important bond 
of continuity ; or, more perversely still, trust in the 
Atonement and not in the Sacraments, as though 
the latter were not the means appointed by Christ 
for the appropriation of the former. 

Considerations like these — sometimes perverse 
misapplications of precious truths — are strength- 
ened by a logic of consequences which weighs more 
than the logic of reason ; and the objectors shrink 
from a position which, however true, is held to un- 
church Protestant bodies, and is mixed up with a 
doctrine of the priesthood which has not yet recov- 
ered from the discredit of its mediaeval perversion. 



in.] THE SUCCESSION AS A DOCTRINE. 29 



LECTURE III. 

(Chapter III. p. 37.) 
APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION AS A DOCTRINE. 

I. The ministry in relation to its objects. 1. The interven- 
tion of the ministry a help and not a hindrance. 2. 
Authorized form essential to the preservation of vital re- 
ligion, not a substitute for it. II. The ministry in rela- 
tion to its subjects. III. The ministry in its relation to 
the Church. IV. The ministry in its relation to those 
to whom it is wanting. V. The ministry as conditioned 
by outward continuity from the Apostles. 1. Probability 
that God would connect His grace with a series of facts. 
2. The sufficient plainness of Apostolical Succession. VI. 
General authority not to be impaired by exceptional cases 
of apparent exemption. VII. The doctrine depends 
upon the evidence of its authority, not upon our concep- 
tion of its consequences. 

I. The Ministry in Relation to its Objects ; 
i.e., the Members of the Church. 

Sacraments, and an authorized ministry as dis- 
pensers of the Sacraments, are alleged to be incon- 
sistent with the Gospel, as limiting the freedom of 
individual access to the Saviour by faith, and as 
apt to withdraw the soul from due appreciation of 
vital religion ; but this objection is obviated by the 
right understanding of the relation of the ministry 
to the members of the Church. 

1. The Ministry a Help and not a Hindrance. 
— Ministry and Sacraments no doubt involve the 
intervention of men in the concerns of a man's 
soul ; but this can be called a limit upon access to 
God only in so far as it points out a right and au- 
thorized way. But so a road might be said to limit 
a traveller ; or a magistrate be said to limit the 
seeker for justice ; or language to be a limit to 



30 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

thought, or the body a limit to the soul. These are 
all alike necessary or helpful limits — not in the way 
of hindrance, but in the way of guiding us to cer- 
tain modes. And if the principle of such inter- 
vention be established, no exaggerated or wrong 
inferences from the principle can overthrow it. 
Because, for example, the claim to infallibility is 
unfounded, it does not follow that it is not the 
office of the Church to teach. 

2. Authorized Form Essential to the Pres- 
ervation of Vital Religion, not a Substitute 
for it. — It is as impossible to have a healthy relig- 
ion without clothing it in forms, as it is to think 
without words, or indeed to think in any other 
words than those which happen to be the particular 
tongue of the thinker. Formalism attaches itself 
quite as readily to the inventions of men as to the 
institutions of God, to recollections of the sup- 
posed moment of conversion as readily as to that 
of the past rite of Baptism, and to the hearing of a 
sermon as readily as to the mechanical partaking 
of the Lord's Supper. It changes ail alike into 
outward and empty things if they are severed from 
present moral influence. Certainly that which has 
the promise of God's grace can scarcely, for that 
reason, be more formal than that which man has 
invented. And the real question is not between 
forms and no forms, but between forms authorized 
and forms unauthorized ; nor between priests and 
no priests, but between priests whom God has com- 
missioned and teachers whom men have heaped to 
themselves. 

II. The Ministry in Relation to its Sub- 
jects ; i.e., the Clergy. 

Objectors are wont to claim a contrast between 
the importance attached by them to an inward call, 



in.] THE SUCCESSION AS A DOCTRINE. 31 

and the importance attached by the Church to an 
outward ordination. This contrast is unfair and 
unsound — unfair, because it opposes two things 
which, rightly understood, the Church holds as much 
as any dissenter ; unsound, because it is based upon 
an inadequate conception of the ministry. It is an 
ad captandum argument — an inference from the 
shortcomings of individuals, to the detriment of a 
general principle. The Church at all times, and 
our own in terms so strong that men sometimes 
demur to them, has required the inward call as well 
as the outward appointment. It is not solely a 
question of fitness, but also one of authority. No 
personal qualification for the office of an ambassa- 
dor can constitute a man an ambassador, without 
the requisite commission. The mere knowledge of 
the Gospel, and a personal appreciation of its value, 
do not constitute the authority to make men par- 
takers of its benefits. An outward ordination at 
the hands of one empowered to ordain is the 
appropriate correlative of the inward influence of 
the Holy Spirit. It furnishes : (1) a wholesome 
check upon self-deception and fanaticism ; (2) an 
evidence to others which cannot be supplied by the 
assertion of individual experience ; and (3) a source 
of strength to those who would otherwise shrink 
from so awful a responsibility. [One may perhaps 
be pardoned, however, for the observation, that the 
author, notwithstanding his generally satisfactory 
treatment of this objection, appears to use the lan- 
guage of the objector rather than the language of 
the Church in making an inward call correspond to 
the outward appointment (p. 52), whereas the cor- 
respondence is more properly between the inward 
viovement and the outward call; both being, on the 
principles of Apostolic Succession, the act of the 
Holy Spirit — the Holy Spirit giving in ordination 
the Divine vocation to those who have previously 



32 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION-. [lect. 

been by Him inwardly moved to seek it. This is 
the language of the Church so far as relates to the 
inward operation of the Holy Spirit (see " Ordering 
of Deacons," first question), and it is important to 
adhere to it. By means of ordination the ministry 
becomes the vocation of those who are admitted to 
it. The idea that a man has the divine vocation 
inwardly, previous to ordination, is directly opposed 
to the idea that he receives it outwardly by means 
of ordination ; i.e., it is opposed to the idea of the 
grace of order. It is the grace of God which in 
ordination gives a man his vocation. This, of 
course, presupposes that the grace of God has in- 
wardly moved him to seek that vocation ; which is 
all that ought to be insisted on, as making the 
inward qualification correspond with the outward 
qualification, and which is that which the Church 
does insist on, ascertaining the fact so far as in the 
nature of the case is possible. (See Dr. Samuel 
Seabury's " Discourse on the Trust of the Candidate 
that he is inwardly Moved by the Holy Ghost" : 
Discourses and other Papers, (p. 16). Pott, Young 
& Co., New York, 1874.,] 

III. The Ministry in its Relation to the 
Church. 

Here also objectors oppose an equally mislead- 
ing contrast — that, viz., between a succession of 
faith, and a succession of order ; whereas the 
Church exists, among its highest purposes, for the 
transmission of a true faith ; and an organized 
transmission of orders is among the conditions 
actually necessary to enable it to fulfil this very 
purpose. Valid orders, no doubt, have not always 
carried unimpaired faith ; yet, on the other hand, 
precisely there, where valid orders have been want- 
ing, has the faith also been most impaired, or 



in.] THE SUCCESSION AS A DOCTRINE. 33 

failed altogether, as with Socinian or Unitarian 
communities. And, humanly speaking, the faith 
has been preserved at all, solely by the existence of 
the Church as a whole ; and the Church as a whole 
has been held together by the very fact of trans- 
mitted orders. 

The outward instruments of grace are, by their 
very nature, subordinate in all cases to the grace 
ministered by them. They are no substitutes for 
it. And if ever the choice is forced upon men 
between the loss of them, and the acceptance of a 
false faith, no doubt the loss of privilege is a less 
evil than the commission of sin. It is better to 
suffer wrong than to do it. But it still remains true, 
that if God has appointed a definite way of receiv- 
ing truth, and transmitting grace, it is at once a 
plain duty, and a comfortable source of assurance, 
that we should seek that truth and grace where 
God has deposited them. 

IV. The Ministry in its Relation to those 
to whom it is Wanting. 

A doctrine that constitutes a Church by the con- 
dition of an Apostolical ministry, and determines 
the question of communion not by the test of the 
love of Christ, but by that of a valid ministry, is 
assumed by many to be self-condemned. 

Yet here, as elsewhere, the misconception arises 
from lack of belief in the truth. It rests upon a 
denial of the general necessity of belonging at all 
to an outward and visible Church of Christ's ap- 
pointment. Men are right, of course, in rejecting 
things indifferent as grounds of separation between 
Christians : the error lies in assuming Church com- 
munion to be a thing indifferent. Love, and sym- 
pathy with that which is good, are not to obliterate 
the boundary lines of truth ; and truth is not the 

3 



34 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

less to be held, because there are good men who, 
unhappily for themselves, do not hold it. We who 
live in the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic 
Church, and regard communion with that Church 
as necessary if it may be had, are neither precluded 
from recognizing the grace of God in some who 
deny that truth, nor bound to approve of sin, or 
other error, in some who have adhered to that 
truth. The teaching of our Lord, which recog- 
nizes the fact that the communion of the visible 
Church may include ungodly men, implies the 
existence of that visible Church, and harmonizes 
with the doctrine of a visible ministry of His ap- 
pointment for the exercise of supernatural powers 
of His gift. 

V. The Ministry as Conditioned by Out- 
ward Continuity from the Apostles. 

An outward ministry, administering outward 
Sacraments, is one thing ; such a ministry con- 
tinuous from the Apostles is another thing. Since 
the need of such a continuity involves the further 
need of the historical proof of it, is it reasonable 
to make salvation dependent upon the proof of a 
series of facts, or to suspend it in any degree upon 
that which requires a complicated proof, and which 
some allege to be incapable of proof ? But if a 
ministry be necessary, and if no man taketh this 
honour to himself except God call him, and if 
neither Scripture nor Apostolic practice show any 
mode of calling to it except by means of those who 
have received it, it is of no consequence what diffi- 
culties are in the way. There can be no ministry 
save where the Apostles have lodged the power of 
appointing one. We are sent back, of necessity, 
to this one source of all rightful ministry. And the 
mode by which the Apostles appointed is in accord- 



Hi.] THE SUCCESSION AS A DOCTRINE. 35 

ance with the ordinary providence of God ; and is, 
in itself, sufficiently plain not to be open to the 
objections made against the difficulty of its proof. 

1. Probability that God would Connect His 
Grace with a Series of Facts. — It has been the 
character of every revelation of God, from the 
beginning, to be bound up with a long, complicated, 
and, at first sight, irrelevant history. The histori- 
cal form of the Bible and the historical form of the 
Church may well run parallel — just as in political 
relationships, which bind men into involuntary 
dependence on the successive developement of 
historical facts ; and in the family relationships, 
which bind up children by the past lives of parents 
and grandparents. The facts of a kingdom spirit- 
ual but visible, and of a government transmitted 
though not inherited, are, by the testimony of 
Scripture and Creed, and practice of the early 
Church, among the resemblances and not the 
differences of earlier and later dispensations. The 
Church is one body of which Christ is the Head ; 
a single city built upon the foundation of Apostles 
and Prophets. 

2. The Sufficient Plainness of the Fact of 
Apostolic Succession. — In one sense Apostolic 
Succession requires a complicated proof ; in an- 
other it is a palpable fact — as much a matter of 
moral certainty as is the actual appointment, by 
the rightful authority, of ministers of state, judges, 
etc. No one doubts the fact of the ordination of 
the Clergy or Bishops now officiating, although, 
among some myriads, there may occasionally have 
been an impostor. Yet this assurance is not 
founded on personal inspection of legal evidence. 
It rests upon the overwhelming presumption that 
the fact would not be as it is, unless the legal 
evidence were behind it ; and this presumption 
extends back to the beginning as regards the 



36 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

Church. Add to this presumption the multiplica- 
tion of the links of ordination, increasing in geo- 
metrical ratio owing to the universal rule of several 
consecrators ; and it becomes as reasonable to 
doubt the fact of succession, as it would be to 
doubt the fact of our descent from parents and 
grandparents — certainly not historically missing 
although not always to be named. As a matter of 
evidence the physical necessity in one case is 
scarcely a stronger presumption than the moral 
necessity in the other. Add, also, that direct evi- 
dence does exist to a remarkable degree, and the 
value of the objection seems to be reduced to its 
lowest terms, and to be equal to zero. 

VI. General Authority not to be Impaired 
by Exceptional Cases of Apparent Ex- 
emption. 

The ministry being not a physical necessity, but 
an imposition of moral obligation, its general au- 
thority cannot be impaired by exceptional cases 
of apparent exemption from its operation. The 
law of the spiritual gifts of God is in all cases 
moral and not physical. An unintentional defect 
cannot defeat God's grace for those who perhaps 
do not even know of the defect, much less have 
had any share in causing it. And the general in- 
tention of the Church, in the judgment even of 
common sense, covers mechanical or technical or 
unconscious defects. 

VII. The Doctrine Depends upon the Evi- 
dence of its Authority, not upon our 
Conception of its Consequences. 

The argument from consequences is invidious, 
and at bottom skeptical. The denial of baptismal 






iv.] THE SUCCESSION SCRIPTURAL. 37 

grace, on the ground of the goodness of the unbap- 
tized or of heathen, and the wickedness of many 
baptized Christians, is parallel with the assump- 
tion that those who maintain Apostolic Succession 
must, in consistency, deny the existence of the 
grace of God entirely outside the limits of the duly 
organized Church. The reasoning is that of men 
who regard God's spiritual gifts as if they were 
purely mechanical forces. A man may defeat God's 
grace, but his doing so is no proof that he never 
had it. A man may cut himself off from the ap- 
pointed means of grace, yet with such moral excuse 
as that the mercy of God still extends to him the 
grace itself. The truth is unaltered, none the less ; 
nor is the vantage ground both of faith and of 
grace diminished, upon which the Churchman 
stands, and by which he will be judged. 



LECTURE IV. 

(Chapter IV. p. 74.) 

APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION SCRIPTURAL. 

New Testament usage of E7ti6K07to^ and UpsdfivrspoS. 
II. Nature of Scriptural evidence, t. Comparison with 
evidence for the doctrine of the Trinity. 2. Relation of 
Scripture to the Church. 3. Relation of doctrine to 
dogma. 4. Evidence of incidental allusion. III. Polity 
in what sense gradually developed. IV. Source of power 
of rulers. 



I. New Testament Usage of Enianonoz and 
IIp£(T/3vTepoS. 

It is no part of the intention of this paper to 
attempt to do what has been thoroughly done over 
and over again. But when scholars and divines 



38 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

can still be found to think Apostolic Succession 
dependent upon strained arguments respecting the 
Scriptural usage of the words Bishop and Presbyter, 
it is desirable at least to point out that the very 
opposite is really the case. If ever, in fact, a plain 
case was needlessly mystified, it has been that of the 
Scriptural evidence as to the true doctrine, several 
orders, and proper powers of the ministry, by the 
very attempt now alleged by some to be its main 
support. The one thing chiefly needed to make the 
truth clear is simply the straightforward acceptance 
of what is manifestly the plain usage of the New 
Testament ; viz., the employment of these terms 
Bishop and Presbyter as equivalent — one descriptive 
of office and the other of age, as the Fathers re- 
peatedly tell us ; or, as has been conjectured, the 
former the Gentile, the latter the Jewish name. 
Much confusion is avoided by recognizing this fact. 
Once take the clear usage of Scripture for granted, 
and rise, of course, above the childishness which 
cannot distinguish words from things, and the Scrip- 
ture teaching on this subject becomes plain. No 
Church is there mentioned that has not an order of 
Clergy as a matter of course, and one also appointed 
by the Apostles as soon as the Church is fairly 
settled, or at least subordinate to them. This 
order included Deacons, and these and other mem- 
bers were subordinate to Presbyters, called also 
Bishops, and these subject to a higher and an in- 
dividual ruler ; viz., to an Apostle acting in concert 
with the College of Apostles. Further, as the charge 
of that Apostle became enlarged, and it was neces- 
sary to provide against death, the charge is com- 
mitted to one individual, deputed and empowered 
to do what no mere Presbyter ever is empowered to 
do; viz., to rule the whole Church in that district, 
Presbyters (sometimes called Bishops) included, 
and to ordain. 



IV.] THE SUCCESSION SCRIPTURAL. 39 



II. Nature of Scriptural Evidence. 

This is not formal nor technical, nor in such 
terms as later needs would require, and therefore is 
in itself more probable ; but it is such as implies, in 
its references, facts without the existence of which 
the references are unintelligible. 

1. Comparison with Evidence for the Doc- 
trine of the Trinity. — They who deny the 
doctrine of the Trinity because (1) the word itself, 
and (2) a technically complete theological account 
of the truths it signifies, are not in the New Testa- 
ment, may also consistently deny the Apostolic 
origin of Episcopacy, and the ministry as divinely 
endowed with gifts of grace ; because (1) the word 
Bishop does not mean in the New Testament what 
we now mean by a Bishop, and (2) the teaching in 
reference to the powers of the ministry is left to be 
gathered from allusions and inferences. Conversely, 
they who deny Apostolic succession on such grounds 
cannot logically refuse to deny the doctrine of the 
Trinity. 

2. Relation of Scripture to the Church. — 
Such reasoners overlook the fact that the New 
Testament is a collection of what, with reverence, 
must be termed occasional tracts or biographies, 
written by men who believed the Gospel, and lived 
as members of the Church already, to others who 
likewise so believed and lived ; and which there- 
fore is framed not to teach doctrine or discipline 
ab initio, but to put on record what was already 
known, or to correct particular errors and enforce 
particular truths. 

3. Relation of Doctrine to Dogma. — They 
overlook also the fact that precise and dogmatic 
statements do not belong to the commencement of 
a belief, but to later stages, when it begins to sys- 



40 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

tematize within, and is assailed by error from with- 
out. A sermon and a theological treatise do not 
teach the same truth in the same way ; and a 
prayer or a religious biography may be based upon 
and imply the Creed, without using one technical 
term of theology. 

4. Evidence of Incidental Allusion. — Nor is 
the weight of Scripture evidence lessened because 
the limitation of the ministering of the Word and 
Sacraments to proper ministers is gathered from 
allusions to their stewardship of God's mysteries, 
or from inferences inevitably drawn from their 
office of tending the flock, and of tending it as 
under shepherds to Christ the Chief Shepherd, and 
therefore as holding an office analogous to His. 

III. Polity in what Sense gradually 
Developed. 

The polity may be said to have been gradually 
developed in the sense of the gradual application 
to the needs of the Church, as these gradually ap- 
peared, of the threefold ministry involved in the 
Apostolic office — Deacons, Presbyters (or Bishops), 
being settled as they were needed under Apostolic 
supervision, continued ultimately by men of Apos- 
tolic powers with the condition of residence in 
limited districts — being Bishops according to the 
later usage of that term. 

IV. Source of Power of Rulers. 

This development, however, is plainly not from 
the body of the disciples upward through two 
intermediate orders to the Apostolic or Episcopal 
order, nor by voluntary promotion on the part of 
the second order of those whom they appointed to 
hold the first. On the contrary, the progress 
appears to have been distinctly a distribution and 



v.] HISTORICAL POSITION, 41 

application of power resident in the Apostolic 
office from the beginning, by the commission of 
Christ Himself, to the disciples of Christ as con- 
stantly subordinate to that recognized authority, 
according to the exigence of time and place. 
There appears no instance in the New Testament 
of the formal appointment of any one member of 
any order of the ministry save by Apostles, or 
Apostolic delegation to a single person ; nor any 
mention even of any one to receive such appoint- 
ment except by Apostles, or by the Church through 
the concession of Apostles. Even those who 
seem to have ministered without formal appoint- 
ment and by extraordinary vocation, appear to 
have been subject to Apostolic rule and order ; and 
St. Paul, who had such vocation, claimed nothing 
more, nor less, than the Apostolate shared with 
other Apostles. The grace of the ministry flowed 
through Apostles, and in due time through those 
whom the Apostles appointed to act in their stead ; 
and this by formal laying on of hands. 



LECTURE V. 

(Chapter V. p. ioo.) 
HISTORICAL POSITION OF THE DOCTRINE. 

I. Nature of patristic testimony as to this doctrine. I. St. 
Clement of Rome. 2. St. Ignatius. II. Weakness of 
negative allegations. III. Comparison of this evidence 
with that for the Canon of the New Testament, and for 
the Creed. IV. Presumptions from later history. 

I. Nature of the Patristic Testimony. 

The tendency of modern skeptical theology is 
to resolve the historical fact of actual belief in this 
doctrine, into a subjective result of current opinions 



42 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

and circumstances ; and so to rob the fact of this 
historical belief both of the character of truth in 
itself, and of all evidential value as proof of a pre- 
ceding revelation. 

This tendency is, no doubt, partly a reaction 
from the opposite extreme of indiscriminate accept- 
ance of all sorts of assertions, which were apt to 
be taken all alike as good evidence. Some room, 
too, for such plausible theorizing is, perhaps, af- 
forded by the necessary character of patristic, as of 
all literary, testimony, which would only change 
gradually from allusion to formal statement. The 
testimony at first is very like that of Scripture — 
incidental ; implying doctrine through sentiment ; 
asserting it in parts ; explaining it in reference to 
occasional exigencies ; but then, in time, as reflec- 
tion suggested, or attack required, formulated into 
theological system. 

But there is literally no room for such a subjec- 
tive theory to have grown up, when the assertion 
of the doctrine begins in uninspired writers, even 
before the Canon of Scripture closes, and continues 
on from that time. 

i. St. Clement of Rome.— The Epistle of St. 
Clement, written before some books of the New 
Testament, holds a position, as evidence, only dif- 
fering from that of Scripture because the Church 
did not understand it to be inspired. St. Clement, 
being the Bishop of Rome, writes to the Church at 
Corinth, apparently left, by the recent death of St. 
Paul, without Apostolic or Episcopal oversight, and 
charges them to obey their Presbyters, whom, in 
accordance with Scriptural usage not yet changed, 
he also calls Bishops. He grounds this charge 
upon the fact of the existence among Christians of 
divinely appointed distinctions, analogous to those 
among the Jews, reckoning, on the Jewish side of 
the analogy, High Priest, Priests, Levites, and Lay- 



v.] HISTORICAL POSITION. 43 

men ; and urges obedience to the Presbycers (or 
Bishops) on the ground of their legitimate ordina- 
tion, affirming that the Apostles had appointed an 
order or method of succession — for the hard word 
enivopLrf must necessarily have some meaning 
equivalent to this — such that themselves first, and 
certain aXXoyi/uoi avdpes in succession to them- 
selves, should appoint (Kadi6Tocvai), while the 
Church at large was simply to consent to the ap- 
pointment (6 vv evd oxrjcy aGrjl) . And these eXXoyi- 
juoi avdpe?, who were thus to keep up the succes- 
sion of Presbyters and Deacons (en io non 01 not 
diauovai) when those who had been first ap- 
pointed should have " fallen asleep " — who were, 
in a word, to succeed the Apostles in their special 
function of ordination — were themselves officials 
appointed subsequently to the first appointed Pres- 
byters and Deacons, who were long before estab- 
lished by the Apostles at each several time, as they 
planted a Church in each place (xard xoopa^ xai 
noXei^) ; so that these last named were by them- 
selves plainly incompetent to perpetuate their own 
succession, but needed this further special organi- 
zation in order to render such perpetuation possi- 
ble. In other words, that along- with these two 
orders of the ministry, there was another ; viz., the 
Apostles and their successors, who were what we 
now call Bishops. 

This is the testimony of one who writes in the 
name of his own Church, representing it as what we 
would now call its Bishop — a position which all 
antiquity with one voice assigns to him. Such tes- 
timony is quite inconsistent with modern theories, 
and is consistent only with the plain inference of 
the Apostolic appointment of a special ministry with 
exclusive powers and Episcopal ordination. 

2. Testimony of St. Ignatius. — The language 
of the next and most important sub-Apostolic wit- 



44 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

ness, St. Ignatius, writing some thirty years later 
than the conjectural date of St. Clement, and cer- 
tainly after the period of the Book of Revelation, 
when diocesan Episcopacy had undoubtedly spread 
over the Church — probably about a.d. 112 — is also 
plain enough. It is so plain, that nothing short of 
the assumption of far more than interpolations, or 
of the spuriousness of some of the Epistles, nothing 
indeed short of condemning the entire Epistles as 
throughout spurious, will serve the turn of object- 
ors. Bishop, Presbyters, and Deacons, under these 
names, settled in each Church — union with them as 
the condition of union with Christ — everything, even 
baptizing, to be done under and with the Bishop, 
and no Eucharist apart from him— such is the re- 
peated, unmistakeable, and well-known teaching of 
one standing so close to the Apostles as to make it 
an hypothesis too absurd to be thought of, that a 
revolution so enormous as the anti-Church view 
would require could possibly have crept in at all, 
much less unawares, and that within a dozen years, 
at the outside, of St. John's death. And this argu- 
ment then admits of no answer but that stale one 
of forgery. To make it complete, it is only needful 
to point out, first, that the language of St. Ignatius 
agrees in spirit with, while it differs only in termi- 
nology from, that of Scripture just preceding him ; 
and, next, that it agrees both in spirit and termi- 
nology with that of the times immediately following 
him. His technical use of the words Bishop and 
Presbyter is not exceptional, occurring unaccount- 
ably a long while before it is found elsewhere ; but 
it is simply the first of an unbroken series of such 
usage continuing thenceforth. 

Upon these two witnesses the case might rest, 
speaking as they do for West and East, at a date 
inconsistent with any serious departure from Apos- 
tolic institution. But it is further to be noted that 



v.] HISTORICAL POSITION. 45 

other doctrines grew into prominence after a while ; 
this one at once. Others came forth, for the most 
part, toward the end of the second century. But in 
this case the evidences are much more plentiful. 
Many references and careful records bridge over 
the space to the time when Irenaeus and Tertullian 
triumphantly appeal to the succession of order — as 
evidence of the succession of faith — from the 
Apostles. 

II. Weakness of Negative Allegations. 

Before a.d. 300 there is literally nothing except 
(1) Tertullian's assertion [after he turned heretic], 
" Where Clergy cannot be had there is still a Church, 
. . . albeit only three exist to form it, and they 
laymen, " which, of course, presumes the necessity 
of Clergy where they may be had, and is, besides, 
balanced by other statements of his maintaining the 
succession ; and (2) a groundless inference from 
the use of the word Presbyter by Irenaeus, who 
speaks of the succession of Presbyters, and of the 
Presbyters who preceded Pope Soter in the See of 
Rome ; by which, however, he undoubtedly referred 
to single rulers like Soter himself : and, a Bishop 
being a Presbyter, the succession maybe spoken of 
as a succession of Presbyters, without excluding 
Bishops ; just as the succession in the Jewish 
ministry may be spoken of as a succession of 
Priests, without excluding the High Priest. Ire- 
naeus, indeed, calls a Bishop a Presbyter, as he is ; 
as St. Peter and St. John, Apostles, call themselves 
Presbyters, as they also were ; yet he never calls 
a Presbyter a Bishop. 

After a.d. 300, there is, (1) the claim of Aerius, 
contemptuously condemned ; (2) a Canon of the 
Council of Aneyra, obscure and much disputed, 
probably sustaining what it is alleged to disprove, 



46 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

and contemporary with acts of Universal Councils 
condemning presbyterian ordinations as void in 
themselves [for example, in the case of Ischyras, 
ordained by the Presbyter Colluthus — who, by the 
way, pretended to be a Bishop ; and the case of the 
persons ordained by Maximus, who is declared to 
be no Bishop — Can. 4, Const., a.d. 381] ; (3) the 
speculations of St. Jerome, who nevertheless re- 
serves to the Bishop the exclusive right of ordain- 
ing, and who, in attributing the distinction of order 
to ecclesiastical rather than to Divine appointment, 
is found to mean, after all, that these distinctions 
were established by the divinely guided Apostles ; 
(4) the perversion of the case of the Presbyters 
of Alexandria, who are said to have named one of 
themselves to fill the See, which is simply a pre- 
cedent for the election of Bishops, not exactly by 
Dean and Chapter, but by the town clergy, and 
the various legends in respect to which, current in 
later times, are quite sufficiently numerous and 
absurd to discredit one another — that of Eutych- 
ius in the tenth century, transforming nomination 
into consecration, being quite as absurd as any, 
and, in the mouth of so late, ignorant, and blunder- 
ing a writer, too worthless to deserve the crushing 
answers that learned men have bestowed upon it ; 
and (5) an assertion of the Pseudo Ambrose, that, 
in the beginning, any one was allowed (not to rule 
or ordain) but to preach and baptize — which, if it 
were true, could amount to nothing more than a 
temporary overflow of zeal beyond authority. 

III. Comparison of this Evidence with that 
for the Canon of the New Testament 
and for the creed. 

The earliest detailed evidence for the text of even 
the Gospels consists of second century transla- 



v.] HISTORICAL POSITION. 47 

tions, and second century Fathers, and a second 
century list of the books of the Canon — the Fathers, 
except Justin Martyr, being of the latter part of 
the second century. Before these, fragmentary 
allusions reach back to Ignatius, Polycarp, and 
Clement. If these are sufficient to compel the faith 
of any reasonable man in the matter of Scripture — 
as they are ; then parallel evidence, and that in all 
points stronger, must be good to prove the Apostolic 
succession. The parallel is good at the end of the 
second century ; but it is to be added that there is 
proof express and detailed of an Apostolic ministry 
by due succession at the end of the first century. 
[Occasional instances of churches with Presbyters 
and without Bishops, if they can be substantiated, 
will net serve to overthrow the presumption thus 
established — for the same thing might happen to- 
day. It is necessary to this end to go further, and 
prove that there is no primitive instance of Episcopal 
succession.] 

In regard to the Creed, it has been already said, 
that the statement of the doctrine of the Trinity 
systematically, and as a whole, is very far later than 
the statement of the doctrine of the Succession. 
Accept the Book, and the Creed and the ministry 
alike find their seal and sanction in that Book. But 
the external evidence for all three is of the same 
kind — only, far stronger in regard to the ministry 
than in regard to either of the others. 

IV. Presumptions from Later History. 

There is yet another historical presumption, ex- 
ceedingly strong, against those who now slight the 
Apostolic ministry and orders. The unbroken and 
unquestioning usage of fifteen hundred years is in 
itself enough. For how could it possibly happen, 
as Hooker well asks, that all that time, if the exist- 



48 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

ing Episcopacy were wrong, no one Church ever dis- 
covered the right order, or doubted the rightness 
of the Episcopacy which did exist ? But the pre- 
sumption is still further strengthened when it is 
added, that those who now deny an Apostolic minis- 
try did not begin by doing so, but were led by circum- 
stances into the want of it, and then gradually, and 
by a manifest afterthought, came to make a merit of 
their own defect, and to defend as right what at first 
they only endured as unavoidable. No doubt the 
Reformation, as a reaction on behalf of inward reli- 
gion against what had become merely outward and 
mechanical, contained within itself the ultimate re- 
sult of an extensive revolution in the relations be- 
tween clergy and laity, and of one to a great extent 
right ; and, moreover, besides weakening what was 
right in the process of rejecting what was wrong, 
contained also the germs of a dangerous and untrue 
denial of principles, provoked by the extreme abuse 
of those principles. And there are words of Luther, 
and more explicitly of Knox and the Scottish re- 
formers, which cover, if pressed to their full meaning, 
the whole extent of an utter denial of any Apostoli- 
cally appointed Church organization. But it is the 
fact, nevertheless, that these views were neither the 
leading cause of the Reformation anywhere, nor 
came forward prominently and generally in the 
controversy for some considerable period ; but were 
thrust upon the reforming party by the pressure of 
circumstances, and only gradually became pro- 
nounced as events developed themselves. 

The long-continued plea of the Lutherans, that 
they appealed to a General Council ; the express 
declaration of the Confession of Augsburg, that the 
Bishops could easily retain obedience if they would not 
urge the observance of traditions which could not be 
observed with a good conscience j the declaration even 
of Calvin, who, moreover, himself signed the 



v.] HISTORICAL POSITION. 49 

Augsburg Confession, that if the hierarchy were one 
wherein the Bishops were so above others as not to 
refuse to be under Christ, there is no anathema which 
they are not worthy of — if there be any such — who 
observe it not with the greatest obedience ; his over- 
ture, in connection with Bullinger and others, to 
Edward VI. for a union, offering to have Bishops in 
their Churches for better unity and concord, an over- 
ture testified by Archbishop Parker, but which had 
been quashed by means of Gardiner and Bonner 
— all this, and much more of the kind, agrees with 
such statements as those of even Beza and Claude, 
justifying their position on the ground that any 
one would be right in running unsent to extinguish 
a fire in his father's house ; and with the statement 
of Du Moulin describing the position of the 
French Reformed as an " interregnum ; " and with 
the defence of the Synod of Dort as a method " ex- 
traordinary," and so such as "cannot in any degree 
prejudice that which is ordinary;" and with the 
words of Peter Du Bose, that " our Churches did 
not embrace the Presbyterian discipline from dis- 
like of Episcopacy or because it seemed to us 
opposed to the Gospel, . . . but because they 
were compelled by necessity ; " and so on. And 
even when strife and the hardening effect of con- 
troversy had led on such as Beza to maintain his 
position to be not merely permissible but right, yet 
distinctions de triplici Episcopatu, and the like, 
softened off the sharp edge of absurdity involved 
in an outright denial of the Episcopate. In a word, 
the controversy about Episcopacy was neither the 
cause nor the occasion of the Reformation any- 
where, but was taken up afterward to maintain a 
position which no reformed community had sought 
upon its own merits. 

To sum up all, the doctrine of Apostolical Suc- 
cession is indeed established by the plain sense of 



50 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect 

Holy Scripture ; but the presumption derived from 
its history — as the doctrine drawn from Scripture 
by the verdict of all times, and rejected by no one 
purely upon its merits at any time, until these latter 
days — is singular and overwhelming. Even when 
men did come to deny it, their denial was no result 
of deeply felt objection to the doctrine itself, but 
was necessitated, or seemed to be so, by their 
position ; and so, gradually, they came to believe 
that to be right, in itself, which had at first been 
thrust upon them. And then, from denying Epis- 
copacy, men have been led to deny orders altogether. 
The power of the Keys, and the real office of the 
Presbyter, have followed the first false step and 
vanished too from men's belief. And the general 
tendency at least of men's thoughts, in those bodies 
which reject the Succession, has been toward 
blotting out altogether the essential functions and 
office of the Christian ministry itself. Who does 
not see, that, with the ministry, unhappily all real 
meaning and life gradually fade also from the yet 
more fundamental doctrines of the Sacraments and 
of the Church ? 



LECTURE VI. 

(Chapter VI. p. 138.) 

APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 

I. Statement of the doctrine. II. Evidence. I. Articles. 
2. Ritual forms. 3. Reformation documents. III. 
Allegations to the contrary. IV. Acts claimed to be 
authoritative. V. Individual opinion. 

I. Statement of Doctrine. 

Orders, in the view of this Church, are an Apos- 
tolical ordinance, necessary to the Church, origi- 



vi.] THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 51 

nating in the Divine appointment, through the act 
of Christ Himself, and by the agency of the Holy 
Spirit, and transmissible only by Episcopal laying 
on of hands. 

Transmission of office by the Episcopal imposi- 
tion of hands is in this Church a palpable fact ; and 
the transmission also of the gift of the Holy Ghost 
appears on the face of the words of the Ordinal. 
But question is made as to the grounds of that 
practice and doctrine ; as to the consequent nature 
of the obligation imposed upon us ; and the esti- 
mate, consequent upon that, of their necessity, and 
of the effect produced by the want of them. Is 
this Apostolic ministry, in the judgment of the 
English Church, only a human or ecclesiastical 
arrangement ; or the mere following of a rule 
which, though Apostolic in date, is not in itself ob- 
ligatory, but simply expedient : or is it of Divine 
institution ? It is true that even in the latter case 
a difference in the nature of the thing that is obli- 
gatory may involve a difference in the conse- 
quences flowing from the lack of it. An external 
ordinance of God is essential ; yet he who is with- 
out it, by no fault of his own, is not in the like 
kind or degree of defect with the man who lacks 
any inward grace or faith. For the very necessity 
may perhaps warrant the belief, that, lacking the 
outward ordinance involuntarily, he may still, of 
mercy, obtain its grace. 

It is, nevertheless, to be affirmed that this minis- 
try is, in the judgment of the English Church, of 
Divine institution, so as to be, speaking in the 
abstract, essential. 

II. Evidence. 

1. Articles. — Article XXIII. declares it to be 
not lawful to minister without being called and 



52 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

sent by those that have public authority to call 
and send ministers. Article XXXVI. declares that 
those who are ordained by the form of the Ordinal, 
prescribed for Episcopal use, are lawfully conse- 
crated and ordered. 

It is matter of inference, to be sure, but of inevi- 
table inference, that Episcopal ordination, as trans- 
mitted by this Church, is thus declared to be in 
accordance with God's law ; and that this is the 
public authority without which it is not lawful to 
minister. Article XXXVI., it is true, is defensive 
against the Roman charge of the insufficiency of 
the English Ordinal ; but Article XXIII. is a gen- 
eral affirmation of the unlawfulness of non-Episco- 
pal ordination, because " public authority " at the 
time of its adoption involved, in England at least, 
Episcopal action, the Presbyterian claim being not 
yet matured. 

It is sometimes said that the affirmation is in- 
tended merely of English orders, and leaves the 
question of non-Episcopal orders in general un- 
touched : but the language could not well be more 
general than it is ; and, besides, it certainly was 
not the business of the Church of England to judge 
others, but only to mind its own affairs — which it 
does by a general affirmation of the unlawfulness 
of ministering in the Congregation, which appears 
to be a term descriptive of the Church, without 
public authority ; such public authority involving, 
as before said, Episcopal action. 

2. Ritual Forms. — These furnish us, in the way 
of evidence, with (a) the first of the prayers for the 
Ember Days, wherein the Church prays : " Al- 
mighty God, ... at this time so guide and 
govern the minds of thy servants the Bishops and 
Pastors of thy flock that they may lay hands," 
etc.; Bishops and Pastors being here one class of 
persons, not two — as the Shepherd and Bishop of 



VI.] THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, 53 

i Pet. ii. 25, are one. (b) In the second Ember 
Day prayer the distinction of order is attributed to 
Divine institution : " Who of thy Divine providence 
hast appointed divers orders in thy Church." (c) 
The Collect for St. Peter's day refers the origin of 
spiritual gifts for the ministry, and their use of them 
for the benefit of the people, to God, saying, " who 
by thy Son Jesus Christ didst give to thy Apostle 
St. Peter many excellent gifts and commandedst 
him earnestly to feed thy flock ; Make, we beseech 
thee, all Bishops and Pastors diligently to preach thy 
holy Word, and the people obediently to follow the 
same." (a) In the Ordinal, we have the appoint- 
ment of divers orders attributed in the Collect for 
Deacons to the Divine Providence, as in the Ember 
Day prayer ; in the Collect for Priests, by a still 
stronger expression, to the Holy Spirit ; and, in 
another prayer in the same office, we find the send- 
ing of ministers of various degrees attributed to 
our Lord after His Ascension, and- the ministry 
described as'" appointed for the salvation of man- 
kind ; " and in the order for Bishops, the Collect 
refers to the many excellent gifts bestowed upon 
the Apostles and prays for correspondent grace for 
the Bishops, the Pastors of the Church ; while the 
solemn words of the ordination itself, both of 
Priests and Bishops, distinctly express the gift of 
the Holy Ghost for the office conferred ; and (e) 
the office for the Visitation of the Sick, providing 
for the absolution of the penitent, puts in the mouth 
of the Priest the declaration that he acts in the dis- 
charge of this power by the authority of our Lord 
committed to him. 

These allusions intimate the Divine institution of 
the Orders designated, and the gifts of the Spirit 
attaching to Orders, in no obscure terms. But 
there is also (/) the plain statement in the Preface 
to the Ordinal, that " from the Apostles' time there 



54 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

have been these Orders of Ministers in Christ's 
Church ; Bishops, Priests, and Deacons," and this 
not as a bare fact, but as a fact implying a law ; so 
that " no man shall be accounted or taken to be a 
lawful Bishop, Priest, or Deacon in the United 
Church of England and Ireland . . . except he 
be admitted thereunto according to the Form here- 
after following, or hath had formerly Episcopal 
Consecration, or Ordination." In other words, 
that is not allowed in the Church of England 
which is not according to the order of Christ's 
Church, from the Apostles' time. 

3. Reformation Documents. — These are no 
longer of legal authority, but they show how con- 
tinuous this doctrine was through that crisis of 
change and unsettlement. Their characteristic is 
the persistent assertion of the supernatural doctrine 
of Holy Orders, (a) " The Declaration of the Func- 
tions and Divine Institution of Bishops and Priests 
contained in the Institution of a Christian Man " 
(1537), sanctioned both by Church and State, tells 
us that Christ and His Apostles did ordain in the 
New Testament that there should be continually in 
the Church certain ministers or officers which should 
have power to confer the grace of the Holy Ghost 
by the Sacraments ; and — that the Church should not 
be destituted of such ministers — that it was also 
ordained by the Apostles that the Sacrament of 
Orders should be applied by Bishops with prayer 
and imposition of hands, (b) In 1538 the docu- 
ment of the " Order of Priests and Bishops " declares 
that Scripture plainly teaches that it was instituted 
not by human, but by Divine authority, (c) In 1543 
appeared " A Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for 
a Christian Man," wherein is the same teaching. 
'■ Order is a gift or grace of ministration in Christ's 
Church, given of God to Christian men, by the con- 
secration and imposition of the Bishop's hands upon 



vi.] THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 55 

them ; and this sacrament was conferred and given 
by the Apostles." (d) In 1548 Cranmer's Cate- 
chism teaches that our Lord Jesus Christ hath both 
ordained and appointed ministers, etc. " He called 
and chose His twelve Apostles, . . . and upon 
Christ's ascension the Apostles gave authority to 
other godly and holy men. . . . They laid their 
hands on them and gave them the Holy Ghost, as 
they themselves received of Christ the same Holy 
Ghost to execute this office. . . . And so the 
ministration of God's Word, which our Lord Jesus 
Christ did first institute, was derived from the 
Apostles unto others after them by the imposition 
of hands and giving the Holy Ghost, from the 
Apostles' time to our days. And this was the con- 
secration, orders, and unction of the Apostles, 
whereby they at the beginning made Bishops and 
Priests, and this shall continue in the Church even 
to the world's end." 

In these documents there is no want of proof of 
the assertion by the Church of England of the 
Divine authority of the ministry of Apostolic Suc- 
cession. Whether that succession was of Priests 
only* or of Bishops and Priests both, is another part 
of the question. These documents appear to make 
but one order of Priests and Bishops ; but it must 
be remembered that this was the School doctrine of 
the day, and that it was not regarded as inconsist- 
ent with the reservation of especial power of ordina- 
tion to the Bishops — as appears from the Anathema 
of the Council of Trent against those who denied 
the superiority of Bishops to Priests, or their posses- 
sion of the power, not possessed by Priests, to 
confirm and ordain, and, which is more to the point, 
as appears from the Preface to the English Ordinal, 
and from the three separate forms of Ordination 
ministered alike by Bishops and not by Priests. 

And, as before remarked, these documents were 



56 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

concerned, not with the Presbyterian controversy, 
which had not yet emerged, but with the Roman 
controversy, wherein they sought to establish the 
Divine authority of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, 
as distinguished from the human authority on which 
rested the distinctions of the hierarchy as main- 
tained by the Romans — minor orders, etc. 

And when, later, the Episcopal, as against Pres- 
byterian, ordination becomes the point disputed, the 
Church never wavered, as a Church, in the matter 
of formally refusing Presbyterian, and maintaining 
Episcopal ordination. There is some evidence that 
a few not Episcopally ordained crept in unawares 
— though Archbishop Whitgift says, " I know none 
such." And very shortly not the law, but the po- 
sition of those who administered it was changed, 
and that became rigorously enforced once more 
which the Church had held as a law all through. 
In Travers' case, the last in date, the Church prin- 
ciple was affirmed and acted on, and in the Archi- 
episcopal articles of 1585 we find that principle 
made the foundation of a systematic discipline. 
And thenceforth, although cases may be found of 
some notable foreigners who held preferment in 
England (seemingly) without re-ordination, yet 
their doing so was plainly contrary, not only, as 
always, to the formal principles, but now also to 
the actual discipline, intended to be in force, and as 
a rule actually enforced, of the English Church. 

III. Allegations to the Contrary. 

Against the evidence thus adduced there is noth- 
ing of the same kind to be set ; i.e., no formal 
expression of the judgment and will of the Church 
of England as such ; but only some looseness and 
negligence on the part of individuals in the matter 
of strict adherence to admitted principle ; and the 



vi.] THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 57 

tendency manifest in some quarters toward sym- 
pathy with Continental reformers in the common , 
struggle against Rome — against which it is equally 
fair to oppose the tendency in certain other quar- 
ters in the Roman direction, since neither such 
tendencies, nor any fluctuations of popular or in- 
dividual belief in the doctrine, can affect the ques- 
tion of the formal teaching of the Church. 

IV. Acts Claimed to be Authoritative. 

1. Allowance of Worship of Congregations 
of Foreign Reformed Bodies. — This allowance, 
as in the case of the Dutch, Huguenots, etc., 
proves the contrary of that for which it is alleged ; 
for, if we had been in communion with these bod- 
ies, what need of separate Churches with special 
ministers not recognized as Clergy of the Church ? 
The very patents protecting those Churches recog- 
nize their diversity from the Church of England ; 
and what possible inference can be drawn in any 
case from hospitable toleration to formal approval ? 

2. Cases of Connivance, at the ministrations 
of those not in English orders, which can have no 
weight as evidence except where attention was 
called to them ; and these are few, and easily dis- 
posed of. 

3. The Jerusalem Bishopric, although half 
forgotten, still exists, and by Eastern Churchmen 
is by no means forgotten ; as to which it is well 
to note that, while the English Church took special 
pains, on one side, to keep clear of undue interfer- 
ence with the Churches of the East, there is, on the 
other, not one word in any English Church docu- 
ment relating to the subject, expressing any judg- 
ment at all respecting the Prussian Church or foreign 
reformed orders ; nor does any Church act commit 
us to either. The Prussian document, indeed, of 



58 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

November 14, 1841, naturally contemplates the pro- 
ceeding from the point of view of " the Evangeli- 
cal Church of Prussia/' But our own Archbishop's 
commendatory letter of November 23, in the same 
year, states simply that he " has consecrated Alex- 
ander to be a Bishop of the United Church of Eng- 
land and Ireland, ... to exercise spiritual 
jurisdiction over the clergy and congregations of 
our Church, which are now or hereafter may be 
established " in Syria and the countries adjacent. 
And Germans who are to minister there are to be 
ordained after the English manner, signing the 
Confession of Augsburg, but using a German Lit- 
urgy " agreeing in all points of doctrine with the 
Liturgy of the English Church. ,, 

V. Individual Opinion. 

But besides these, to some extent, formal acts, it 
has been alleged, and is believed to be true, that 
the current opinion of English divines has through- 
out lain in the direction of refusing to condemn for- 
eign reformed orders. That laymen have so held, is 
certain from Lord Bacon's Advertisement Respecting 
the Controversies of the Church of England, published 
about 1590. But it is only a part of the truth as 
regards English divines. Such refusal in the mouth 
of Bishop Burnet himself, one of its strongest eccle- 
siastical propounders, was based invariably on the 
assumption of an absolute necessity. And if the 
excuse is repudiated or ceases to hold good, then 
the defence founded upon it must needs fail also. 
A defence rested on such a principle is but tem- 
porary — during the necessity — and extends only to 
the persons themselves, and to orders in relation 
only to the people among whom they minister. It 
is a defence also which in principle condemns the 
thing defended, as being, of course, a thing wrong 



VI.] THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 59 

in the abstract, if nothing but necessity can excuse 
it. [And in regard to this whole class of cases it is 
to be observed : (1) that the expressions of indi- 
viduals, however eminent, are personal to them, and 
do not bind the Church ; (2) that they are balanced 
by expressions of other eminent men ; and (3) that 
there seems to be hardly any concession in this 
direction by any man known to have Church prin- 
ciples which cannot be balanced by his own state- 
ments to the contrary, as the author in his running 
comment (pp. 167-175) sufficiently shows. 

That the American Church holds the same ground 
as the English Church, is shown : (1) by the fact 
that the formal evidence is substantially the same ; 
(2) by the distinction explicitly made by its Canons, 
which require no re-ordination of men already 
Episcopally ordained in other Communions, and do 
require ordination of those who have served as 
ministers in other bodies without Episcopal ordina- 
tion. (Digest of Canons of General Convention of 
1892, Title L, Canon 3, § vi ; Canons 14, 15, 17.) 

The one difference, in the matter of formal evi- 
dence on this subject, between the English and 
American Prayer Books, appears to be the omission 
from the American Book of the indicative form of 
Absolution in the Office for the Visitation of the 
Sick. This omission, however, regarded as evidence 
of the mind of the Church as to the doctrine of 
Apostolic Succession, is much more than counter- 
balanced by the " Office of Institution," with which 
the American Prayer Book was enriched in the 
early part of its first century ; and which, on sev- 
eral accounts, is excellent reading for those who 
cherish the fancy that this doctrine is matter of 
individual opinion.] 



PART II. 

The Fact, and the Canonical Validity, of 
the Apostolical Succession in England. 

LECTURE I. 

(Chapter VII. p. 178.) 
THE FACT OF PARKER'S CONSECRATION. 

I. Presumption in favour of possession with apparent regu- 
larity. II. Absence of evidence adequate to overthrow 
the presumption. III. Positive evidence of fact. I. Al- 
lusions of contemporaneous writers: (a) Zurich letters, {b) 
Machyn's Diary. 2. Legal cavils of opposers. 3. Park- 
er's testimony. 4. Public records. 

I. Presumption in Favour of Possession with 
Apparent Regularity. 

The fact of the continuity of the Apostolic Suc- 
cession in England in the sixteenth century has 
been disputed by Roman controversialists. The 
objections are of so contemptible a character as to 
make them unworthy of notice, were it not true 
not only that they have been made, but also that 
in spite of their entire refutation, and their aban- 
donment by the better class of our opponents, they 
are calmly and confidently revived whenever men 
are found simple enough to be deceived by them. 1 

1 The question has sometimes been put to me in going over 
this part of the course — a good deal of the Seminary teaching 
being conducted, in my own experience at least, by a rather 
amusing inversion of the Socratic method — whether it was 
worth while to spend so much time upon it, and whether it 



62 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

Questions of fact are raised, first, by the denial 
that Archbishop Parker was consecrated, he being 
the chief consecrator of those who first followed 
him ; and, secondly — supposing his formal conse- 
cration — by the denial that Barlow, who was chief 
in his consecration, was himself consecrated. The 
denial of a fact, ordinarily, throws the burden of 
proof on those who affirm it. In the present in- 
stance, however, there are presumptions in favour 
of the fact sufficient to throw the burden upon 
those who deny it. But, not to depend upon this, 
we are prepared to give sufficient evidence of the 
fact in both cases — Parker first, and Barlow after- 
wards. [At the same time — distinguishing between 
what is simply matter of fact, affecting actual valid- 
ity, and what is matter of orderly, legal, and canon- 
ical propriety, affecting regularity — it is to be said, 
that the whole of this elaborate discussion of the 
fact of Parker's and Barlow's consecrations might 
be dispensed with, without in the least impairing 
the actual succession of the Bishops of the Church 
of England by transmission of Episcopal ordina- 
tion through Bishops episcopally ordained. It nar- 
rows the issue and makes a convenient form of 
attack to assume that this succession depends in 
fact upon two successive individuals, and then to 
endeavor to disprove the fact of consecration in 
those particular cases. This assumption, however, 

was not nowadays admitted by Roman controversialists that 
there was nothing in this objection to the fact of Parker's con- 
secration contained in what is called the Nag's head fable. 
Generally answering as in the text, I said once in reply to the 
query : " Well, yes, I suppose it is true that the Romans do 
not press this story as they once did ; but you may depend 
upon it that there will always be some one to urge it upon any 
one who is fool enough to believe it." To which promptly 
responded an ingenuous youth, whose ears, in the language of 
the old Greek philosopher, were apt to run into his tongue : 
" Yes, Professor, I know that ; I've had it tried on me ! " 



i.] PARKER'S CONSECRATION. 63 

rests upon another assumption, which ought to be 
established before the inference can be justified ; 
viz. , that ordination is necessarily the act of one 
individual ; and that, of the Bishops who partici- 
pate in the act of perpetuating the succession, one 
only performs the act of ordination, while the other 
Bishops associated with him in that act contribute 
nothing to its efficacy. If this assumption could be 
established, we would still be ready, as hereafter 
shown, to meet the inference ; but, until it can be 
established — and thereby both the reason of the 
Catholic rule of several consecrators in each case, 
and the evidence of Roman opinion apart from this 
case, be set aside — there is no real necessity, keep- 
ing strictly to the issue of fact, for so doing. To 
say that a valid consecration maybe by one Bishop, 
is a different thing from saying that a valid con- 
secration must be by one Bishop, and that the co- 
operation of all associated with that one counts for 
nothing. Yet this is what the controversy in 
regard to the fact of the consecrations, of Parker 
and Barlow assumes. Whereas, upon the Catholic 
ground of the actual validity, in fact, of consecra- 
tion by a single Bishop, and the canonical obliga- 
tion of the uniting of several Bishops in the act of 
consecration for greater certainty, and better evi- 
dence of certainty, and as a warrant of the exercise 
of the office within the unity of the Church, it is 
manifest that the English line of succession in fact 
traces through those who were duly qualified to 
continue it, even if Parker and Barlow had never 
existed — as will appear from the inspection of such 
a tabulated statement of the succession as, for ex- 
ample, is given by Percival in his Apology for the 
Apostolic Succession (p. 102). However, as objec- 
tions cannot always be sufficiently disposed of by 
showing that they ought not to be made, it is some- 
times necessary, as in the present case, to show that 



64 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

they are worthless when they are made ; and so 
we go on to consider the objections in the order 
designated.] 

In Parker's case the presumption in favour of the 
fact results from his undoubted possession of the 
See of Canterbury, without question of the fact of 
his consecration, from 1559 to his death in 1575 ; 
nor was the fact disputed until 1604, i.e., forty-five 
years after it took place, and twenty-nine years 
after his death. 

The opposers, therefore, should show cause why 
this presumption should be disregarded. 

II. Absence of Evidence Adequate to Over- 
throw the Presumption. 

The cause shown is wholly inadequate. It con- 
sists of an allegation made in 1604 by an exiled 
Anglo-Roman priest, Holywood, in a book printed 
at Antwerp, that Parker and some others were con- 
secrated, so to call it, by Dr. Scory at the Nag's 
Head Tavern, in Cheapside, on a day unspecified, 
with a mock ceremony ; and that these, in turn, 
in the same way consecrated Scory. Holywood 
says that Thomas Neale, who was chaplain to Bon- 
ner, and Hebrew lecturer at Oxford in 1559, and 
who died in 1590, related this to the old confessors 
for religion — meaning, presumably, the adherents 
to the side of the Pope in the reign of Elizabeth — 
who related it to him. This is the origin of what is 
called the Nag's Head fable. 

The story is absurd and improbable on the face of 
it : (1) Because ', although bitter attacks were made by 
Roman controversialists from the time that Parker 
took his seat, they are ail based upon questions of 
right, and not of fact. Many vehemently deny his 
right to the See, but none dispute the fact of his 
consecration. In truth, the objections to the right- 



I.] PARKER'S CONSECRATION-. 65 

fulness of his consecration assume the fact that he 
was consecrated. . . . (2) From its repetition ; 
being the hearsay of hearsays. Holywood says that 
the old confessors said that Neale said, is not very 
good evidence. (3) From the time and place of its 
appearance — forty-five years after the fact, twenty- 
nine years after the death of the man to whom it 
related, and fourteen years after the death of the 
man who is said to have related it ; and in a dis- 
tant foreign town. (4) From the contradictory ver- 
sions of it. Prior to 1604 the story is unknown, but, 
during the twenty years following, every Anglo- 
Romanist writer, with hardly an exception, repeats 
it exultingly, though in varying and contradictory 
terms. (5) From want of probability. Why should 
there have been a mock consecration at a tavern, 
when every Cathedral and Church in the land was at 
the disposal of the persons authorized to consecrate; 
when there was a solemn and formal Ordinal suited 
to their views, in use in the time of Edward VI., 
and still ready to their hands ; when such a pro- 
fane farce would have been open to the comment of 
watchful enemies, eager to find a flaw in their pro- 
ceedings, and, besides, would have given no legal 
title to Bishoprics, to their temporalities, or to seats 
either in the House of Lords or in Convocation — 
not to speak of penalties ; and when, lastly, a queen 
like Elizabeth would not, especially at that critical 
period, have tolerated such folly for an instant? 
(6) From a probable foundation for the story in an 
act distinct from, but connected with consecration. 
When a story is improbable we disbelieve it, or sus- 
pend our assent to it. When there are circumstances 
which might have given rise to a false report, the 
knowledge of such circumstances makes the false- 
hood of the report the more certain. Parker was 
co?iftrmed — not consecrated — at Bow Church, De- 
cember 9, 1559, not m person, but by his proxy 



66 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

Bullingham. Bow Church was close by the Nag's 
Head Tavern, in Cheapside. Bishop Bramhall sug- 
gests that the officials, this ceremony being com- 
pleted, may, after the fashion of Englishmen, have 
dined at this tavern, and that this was the real 
hearsay which poor Mr. Neale innocently started. 

III. Positive Evidence. 

But waiving the absurdity and improbability of 
the story, Parker's consecration is proved by posi- 
tive evidence. 

i. Allusions of Contemporaneous Writ- 
ers — Taking first the evidence, direct but of less 
formal character, reference is to be made to {a) 
The Zurich Letters. These are letters written by 
English Reformers in the early part of Elizabeth's 
reign, and at other times, giving account to their 
friends on the Continent of proceedings at home. 
These letters were not known in England until 
Bishop Burnet found them at Zurich in 1685, nor 
printed in full until about 1842. This evidence, 
therefore, was neither made nor collected to bear 
on this question ; yet the letters prove in detail, 
with the conclusiveness of undesigned, private, and 
casual allusions, the consecrations of several Bish- 
ops, including Parker, (b) Machyn's Diary is an 
evidence of the same sort. A private citizen keep- 
ing a diary enters the fact of Parker's consecration 
December 17, 1559, as other facts are entered. 

2. Legal Cavils of Opposers. — These (a) ne- 
cessarily assume the fact, and (b) lead to further 
evidence of it. (a) Home, Bishop of Winchester, 
tendered to Bishop Bonner the oath of the royal su- 
premacy, and, upon his refusing it, proceeded legally 
against him. Bonner's plea was that Home was no 
Bishop, because inter alia the statute required to an 
Episcopal consecration either an Archbishop and 



I.] PARKER'S CONSECRATION. 67 

two Bishops, or four Bishops, whereas Home had 
been consecrated by Parker and two Bishops ; and 
Parker was no Archbishop, because of his four con- 
secrators three had been deprived of their Sees, and 
the fourth deposed from his Suffragan Episcopate ; 
that is to say, because Parker had been, in fact, con- 
secrated by the very Bishops named in the register of 
his consecration, (b) In consequence of such like 
legal cavils the statute of Elizabeth's Parliament of 
1568 declares all these previous consecrations to 
have been duly and orderly done according to law ; 
and the Archbishops and Bishops in 156 1 declare 
Edward's Ordinal, and ordinations under it, to be 
right, orderly, and lawful, both of which declara- 
tions would have been absurd unless the Archbish- 
ops and Bishops in question had been actually — in 
fact — consecrated. 

3. Archbishop Parker's Testimony. — Parker 
enters his consecration in his own hand in his pri- 
vate diary, which, with a collection of MSS. made 
by him, containing letters and transcripts relating 
to the consecration of himself and others, was 
deposited in the library of his college — Corpus 
Christi — in Cambridge, where they still are : 

" 1559, 17. — Decmbr. Ann. 1559. — Consecratus 
sum in Archiepiscopum cantuarien. Heu ! Heu ! 
Domine Deus in quae tempora servasti me ? Jam 
veni in profundam aquarum, et tempestas demer- 
sit me," etc. 

4. Public Records. — But the proper and con- 
clusive evidence of the consecration is furnished by 
the Public Records. These are (a) Civil ; (b) 
Ecclesiastical. 

(a) In the appointment of an English Bishop, a 
series of State Documents is interwoven with the 
Ecclesiastical Acts, Conge d'eslire, preceding the 
election ; Royal assent following, with commission 
to confirm and consecrate ; Restitution of Tempo- 



68 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

ralities, eta Each of these State Documents is 
duly copied, not only into the Ecclesiastical Regis- 
ter, but also, and previously, into the State Rolls ; 
so that there are two sets of records, the keepers 
of which have no connection with each other. But 
(b) the Ecclesiastical Records are both complicated 
and of more than one kind — the Archiepiscopal 
Registers, chiefly at Lambeth, but partly at Canter- 
bury ; the Episcopal Registers at the several Cathe- 
dral towns ; the Registers of Deans and Chapters ; 
the Register of the Prerogative Court at London — 
all under different custodians. The multiplicity of 
these documents, and their complication with each 
other — by mention, for instance, in one, of what is 
recorded in others — make it absolutely impossible 
to manipulate them by interpolating forged entries ; 
for one such entry would involve others innumer- 
able. 

An examination of these documents shows that, 
so far as Parker's consecration is concerned, they 
tally with each other, and with all the other less 
formal evidence in the case. The nicest scrutiny 
has failed to detect any flaw in them, or any other 
want of exactness than the inevitable slips that 
occur in all MSS., and which are self-evident when 
noticed. 



II.] CONSECRATION OF BARLOW. 69 



LECTURE II. 

(Chapter VII. p. 202.) 
CONSECRATION OF BARLOW. 

I. Position of Barlow in the Succession. II. Evidence. 

III. Circumstances refuting- presumption from want of 
record. 1. Lateness of objection. 2. Obligation to be 
consecrated. 3. Want of motive to act without conse- 
cration. 4. Carelessness of the Registrar. 5. Careless- 
ness of other Registrars. 6. Comparison of evidences. 

IV. Worthlessness of the objection supposing it were 
true. V. The Consecrators of Parker duly represented 
the English Church. 

I. Position of Barlow in the Succession. 

On the 6th of December, 1559, Elizabeth issued 
a commission to seven Bishops (six English and 
one Irish — Bale of 0£sory) surviving from the 
reigns of Henry VIII. and Edward VI., authorizing 
them, or a majority of them, to consecrate Matthew 
Parker Archbishop of Canterbury. Four Bishops 
acted under this commission; viz., Barlow, Scory, 
Coverdale, and Hodgskin. 

Barlow is thus one of the four consecrators of 
Parker. The Romans deny the fact of his conse- 
cration, as well as of that of Parker. The denial in 
both cases is trifling and vain : but in the case of 
Parker it rests upon a falsehood ; while in the case 
of Barlow it does rest upon one single fact, which, 
however, is quite insufficient to support it. 

The inference from the denial is that the Succes- 
sion in fact fails if Barlow was not consecrated. 
The answer is, 1st, that he was consecrated ; and, 
2d, that, so far as Parker's consecration is con- 
cerned, it is immaterial whether he were or not. 



70 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 



II. Evidence. 

The Roman denial of the fact of Barlow's con- 
secration is supported by the fact of the absence 
from the Public Records relating to his ecclesiastical 
advancement, of the particular record certifying his 
consecration ; that is to say, among the various 
papers pertaining to the constituting of a Bishop, 
this one is missing. 

Barlow was one of Henry VIII. 's Ambassador 
Bishops. He was appointed Bishop of St. Asaph, 
January 7, 1536, and confirmed during his absence 
in Scotland, February 23. He was appointed to 
St. David's April 10, and confirmed in person April 
21, being then in London. In June, 1536, he ap- 
pears both in Parliament and in Convocation as 
Bishop. The restitution of temporalities dates 
April 26 ; the writ of summons to Parliament, as 
Bishop of St. David's, April 27. He is called Bish- 
op of St. David's on and after April 25, and signs 
his letters Wm. Menevensis, 1 whereas in March, 
although confirmed to St. Asaph, he signs himself 
Wm. Barlo. April 25, when he was in London, 
was a Sunday. It is at least a possible supposition 
that he should have been consecrated on that day. 
The order of precedence, however, in the House of 
Lords, which though not absolutely unvarying, yet 
adheres to a nearly unvaried list, places Barlow after 
the Bishops of Chichester and Norwich, who were 
consecrated — the latter certainly, the former prob- 
ably — upon June 11, 1536 ; and, on the strength of 
the presumption thence derived, the author conjec- 
tures June 11 as the probable date of Barlow's con- 

1 The Primate of Caerleon, in the early part of the sixth cen- 
tury, resigned his Archbishopric to St. David, who removed 
his archiepiscopal seat to Menevia, now called St. David's 
(Bramhall's Works, II., 172).— A. C. L. 



il] CONSECRATION OF BARLOW. 71 

secration, although he notes the preference of an 
able and friendly American critic and writer, Dr. 
Hugh Davey Evans, for the date of April 25. Upon 
either supposition the possibility of Barlow's conse- 
cration is equally made out. The correct day must 
wait for certain determination, until the record, if it 
was ever made, is dragged out of some corner 
where the binder, on that hypothesis, must have 
left it when collecting the disjecta membra of Cran- 
mer's Archiepiscopal records, in order to bind them 
into their present shape. The record missing is a 
short one, that namely of the consecration alone ; 
the other steps in the process being recorded. And 
this short record, apparently either omitted in the 
copying or the binding, while it would be positively 
good evidence of the consecration, obviously does 
not afford negatively by its absence a sufficient 
evidence of the want of consecration. 

III. Circumstances Refuting the Slight Pre- 
sumption Resulting from the Absence of 
this Record. 

1. Lateness of the Objection. — No one 

charged that Barlow was not consecrated until 
eighty years after the event, and forty-eight years 
after his death ; and this silence was during a period 
of bitter feeling against Barlow, as well as against 
the Church — a period in which any charge, which 
could have been made, would not have been spared. 

2. Obligation to be Consecrated. — The law 
of the Church and the law of the land required 
consecration — the latter under penalties. A strong 
force of public opinion required it. The House 
of Lords would not have admitted an unconsecrated 
Prelate ; nor would the Upper House of Convoca- 
tion. Bishops whom he joined in consecrating 
would have objected. Some of his clergy would 



72 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

have demurred to his jurisdiction. It would have 
been denied in the legal proceedings in which he 
was largely implicated. 

3. Want of Motive to Act without Conse- 
cration. — There was no reason why he alone 
should not be consecrated. To avoid consecra- 
tion, were it possible, would have imperilled his 
whole worldly position ; and those who would aid 
him by refraining from their part in his consecra- 
tion would themselves have incurred heavy penal- 
ties. 

That in his view consecration was unnecessary, 
if it could be shown to be his serious and settled 
judgment, would not be sufficient to justify the risk 
of non-consecration. Yet, even here, his irreverent 
words witness to the fact of his consecration ; for 
that " A layman should be as good a Bishop as 
himself, or the best in England, if the King chose 
him to be a Bishop," is a remark which would have 
been quite without point, if he had not been him- 
self in fact a Bishop. His official acts, moreover, 
contradict such expressions ; Barlow, as well as 
Cranmer, having been a member of the commit- 
tee that drew up the Institution of a Christian 
man. 

4. Carelessness of the Registrar. — Cran- 
mer's Register seems to consist of a bundle of 
parchments of different sizes, almost certainly 
bound up after date — several documents being 
quite misplaced as to time. This Register omits 
in the matter of consecrations and translations 
about one-fourth of those which really occurred. 
Five out of eleven translations, and nine out of 
forty-five consecrations are missing. Of these 
nine, three are ignored ; five, of which Barlow's is 
one, are entered as far as the confirmation ; and 
the ninth is broken off in the middle of a page and 
of a sentence. Yet no one doubts, and there is no 



II.] CONSECRATION OF BARLOW. 73 

reason to doubt, the consecrations of the others in 
like case with Barlow. 

5. Carelessness of other Registrars. — In War- 
ham's Register, six out of twenty-six consecrations 
are omitted ; and two in Pole's Register. [It is curi- 
ous to note, in this connection, that the ostensible 
validity of Pole's consecration rests on Hodgskin's 
— since the record of the consecration of his conse- 
crators cannot be traced two steps back, except in 
Thirlby ; one of whose consecrators was Hodgskin, 
whose record alone is extant. So, if Parker's con- 
secration must fail for want of this kind of evidence, 
Pole's also fails. But of course both are good. 
See Percival's Apology for the Apostolic Succession, 
p. 101.] 

6. Comparison of Evidences. — The question 
is, then, whether a consecration which is established 
by such presumptive evidence — arising from noto- 
riety ; from law ; from uniform custom ; from over- 
whelming motives to it, and absence of motive to 
the contrary ; from every possible source whence 
presumptive evidence can be drawn — can be set 
aside by inability to find, after a long interval, a 
record which ought to have been made by an offi- 
cial who has omitted one out of five of all entries 
of the kind, the consecration being disputed in 
none of the other cases. 

IV. WORTHLESSNESS OF THE OBJECTION SUPPOS- 
ING it were True. 

Barlow was only one out of four consecrators 
of Parker. Of the consecration of the other three, 
Scory, Coverdale, and Hodgskin, there is the regu- 
lar as well as the presumptive evidence. 

The principle in regard to the value of the act of 
those joining in consecration is not that one con- 
secrates, and the others merely witness his acts ; 



74 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

but that all who join in the consecration are not 
merely witnesses, but also cooperators — a princi- 
ple testified to by surely a most sufficient witness, 
Martene, who indeed speaks, as Haddan says, but 
common sense when he determines : " An vero 
omnes qui adsunt Episcopi co-operatores sint, an 
testes tantum consecrationis inquiri posset ; verum 
non tantum testes, sed etiam co-operatores esse 
citra oranem dubitationis aleam asserendum est;" 
and who, in what follows, if he does not speak 
common sense, certainly speaks what shows him to 
be an unimpeachable Roman : " Solus enim Ponti- 
fex Romanus hoc gaudebat privilegio, ut solus 
episcopos consecravet," etc. 1 

And, moreover, in this particular consecration of 
Parker, it is recorded that the four Bishops not 
only joined in the imposition of hands, but also in 
the recital of the words of ordination. (Appendix, 

P. 3S9-) 

So that if it could be proved that Barlow was 

not consecrated, which is impossible ; or if there 
could be reasonable doubt of his consecration, 
which there is not — we should still have the neces- 
sary proof of the fact- of Parker's consecration by 
three validly consecrated Bishops. 

V. The Consecrators of Parker Represented 
the Episcopate of the English Church. 

Questions as to legal and canonical objections to 
the succession are to be considered later ; but in 
treating the fact of the continuity of the succession, 
it is to be noted here that the consecrators of 
Parker were the remaining Bishops of Edward's 
time, survivors of those who had been mostly exiled 
or slain under Mary ; and so did, in fact, represent 

1 De Antiquis Ecclesicz Ritibus, Lib. I., Cap. VIII., Art. 
X., Ord. XVI. 



II.] CONSECRATION OF BARLOW. 75 

the Church as it existed prior to any objections 
made by Romans against the succession. 

[All the consecrations under Mary were uncanon- 
ical, made by authority of the Bishop of Rome, 
renounced in England since 1534 by the legitimate 
Synodical Assemblies of the Church, both in Can- 
terbury and York, whose canonical regulations duly 
made were never repealed by the same Synodical 
authority. 

Without pretence of ecclesiastical law, and with- 
out the consent of the Metropolitan, Mary deprived 
thirteen Bishops and intruded others into their 
Sees. 

At the accession of Elizabeth, the only Canon- 
ical Bishops were the survivors of those consecrated 
under Henry VIII. and Edward VI., of whom there 
were eight only. Of these eight, Bonner and Thirlby 
were incapacitated as concerned in the death of their 
Metropolitan, and as pertinacious adherents to the 
lawfully rejected Papal jurisdiction : the rest con- 
sented to the consecration of Parker, and four of 
them took part in it. 

The Marian Bishops were deprived by Elizabeth, 
as they had been intruded by Mary, and they made 
no attempt to keep up their succession. So that 
line died out ; and the line that continued is de- 
rived from pre-Reformation sources, through those 
who were certainly lawfully and canonically settled 
during and after the Reformation, and who only 
suffered from the unlawful deprivation by Mary, 
which could not take away the right that they 
had possessed ; and which, when they exercised 
it, no one could lawfully dispute. Cf. Percival's 
Apology for Apostolic Succession, pp. 101, 102.] 



76 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 



LECTURE III. 

(Chapter VIII. p. 231.) 

THE CANONICAL VALIDITY OF ENGLISH ORDERS. 

I. The author's treatment of the subject. II. Objections 
sentimental and declamatory. 1. Possibility of unbap- 
tized Anglican Bishops. 2. Want of reverence in An- 
glican clergy. 3. Want of belief by Anglicans in Angli- 
can Orders. 4. Alleged condemnation of Anglican Orders 
by Roman Church from the time of the discarding of 
Papal supremacy. 

I. The Author's Treatment of the Subject. 

The position of the English Church, and of that 
in this Country as well, unhappily involves much 
controversy, situated as it is between the two fires 
of Protestantism and Romanism. The treatment of 
the subject of Apostolic Succession is therefore, of 
necessity, very largely in the way of answers to ob- 
jections. The first part of the author's work con- 
cerns chiefly those objections which relate to the 
need and authority of the ministry of Apostolic 
Succession ; the second part covers those objections 
which are made to the fact of our possession of that 
ministry, and to the rightfulness, under Catholic 
law, of that succession which we do possess. In 
other words, the Romans, from whom chiefly these 
latter objections proceed, sometimes deny the fact 
of the continuity of our succession, and sometimes 
deny that our succession, if we have one, is a law- 
ful succession. 

The proofs of the fact of the continuity of our 
succession, at those points in which it is on this 
score attacked by the Romans, having been sufB- 



in.] CANONICAL VALIDITY. 77 

ciently stated, we come now to consider those objec- 
tions which are made to the succession as we have 
it, and which are divided by the author into two 
classes ; those, viz., which are merely captious, and 
those which are of a more serious and argumentative 
character. 

II. Objections Sentimental and Declama- 
tory. 

Objections of this class are, in themselves, un- 
worthy of reply ; but when they are made they 
have a certain influence unless they are met. 

1. Possibility of Unbaptized Anglican 
Bishops — Quakers are the only noticeable sect 
without baptism, and it would be hard to find one 
English Bishop who began life as a Quaker. If 
schismatical Baptism be rejected, there are but 
four or five English Bishops who began life as dis- 
senters of any sort, among several hundred. Cases 
of such rarity — even if they were proved — would 
not weigh against the general intention of the 
Church, which would certainly suffice to cure un- 
conscious default or individual and unknown neg- 
lect ; and, moreover, it is impossible, even on the 
extreme ground that individual acts in a few cases 
were invalid, that the succession in general should 
be invalidated. 

Romanists claim that, in the possible case of an 
unbaptized Pope, his ex cathedra declaration covers 
defects in his Christianity, and so in his Orders ; 
and, if it does not change the fact, suffices to reverse 
men's belief about it — the evidence all the while 
remaining the same. It does not become them to 
base an objection on the imaginary case of an occa- 
sional unbaptized Bishop, among others sufficient 
to carry on the succession. 

2. Want of Reverence in Anglican Clergy. 



78 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

— It is better, it has been said, to suppose English 
Clergymen no Priests, because, if they were, their 
Eucharists would be true Eucharists, which would 
be shocking, in view of their irreverence. Of course 
this is neither evidence nor argument against the 
succession. Romanists who use this insinuation 
appear to have some sympathy with the Protestant 
notion, repudiated by our Articles, that the un- 
worthiness of the Minister hinders the grace of the 
Sacraments ; and, besides the folly of the suppo- 
sition that Anglican Clergy have a monopoly of 
irreverence, they seem also to forget that instances 
of poison in the Eucharistic cup, in their own com- 
munion, are not solitary ; and that the character 
of many Popes has been as black as words could 
paint it. 

3. Want of Belief by Anglicans in Angli- 
can Orders. — It is fair to say that this faith is 
implicit if not explicit. 

The clamorous assertion of special articles of 
faith is characteristic of sects and minorities. 
Churchmen who accept the faith and order of the 
Church as a whole are, as a rule, not particularly 
solicitous to defend them. Haply, in some cases, 
not so well informed of the arguments for them as 
they should be, they are nevertheless grieved with 
the disregard of them, and, except in some per- 
verted cases, would be shocked to see a dissenting 
minister intruded into a priestly function. 

[At the same time, with regard to these last three 
objections, Fas est ab hoste doceri. We ought to 
learn from them an increase of care in the minis- 
tration of Baptism, of reverence in the celebration 
of the Eucharist, and of diligence in the instruction 
of the Congregation in the order, as well as the 
faith of Christ's Church.] 

4. Alleged Condemnation of Anglican Or- 
ders by the Roman Church from the Time of 



ill.] CANONICAL VALIDITY. 79 

Discarding the Papal Supremacy. — This alle- 
gation is false in fact — unimportant if true. The 
objection assumes the necessity of the Papal ap- 
proval, which ought to be first established. 

But in fact English Orders were not denied at 
first, nor was there any authoritative condemnation 
of them by the Court of Rome for one hundred and 
fifty years. Both Julius III. and Paul IV., and 
Cardinal Pole acting with their sanction, accepted 
English Orders under Mary's reign, by whatever 
Ordinal conferred, wherever the person so ordained 
submitted to the Pope. 

Such persons were re-habilitated, not re-ordained. 
English Orders, under whatever condition accepted, 
were not regarded as null. They were not simply 
repeated, as they are to-day. 

The first instance of formal condemnation was in 
1704 ; and this upon a mere ex parte proceeding, in 
which Petitioner, Counsel, and Court were all on 
one side, and where there was no pretence of exami- 
nation of evidence on the other side. 

[In that year, John Clement Gordon, who had 
been Bishop of Galloway — the then Scottish orders 
having been derived from the English line — applied 
to Clement XI. at Rome, for re-ordination on the 
ground of the doubtfulness of what he had already 
received. The allegations are, want of sufficient 
form and intention ; and, particularly, the failure 
of the succession in fact — in proof of which he 
specifically alleges the Nag's Head story. Where- 
upon the Pope pronounces Gordon's orders null, 
and directs him to be re-ordained. 

(See Seabury's Continuity of the English Church 
in the Sixtee?ith Century, pp. 165-172. See also 
Elrington's Validity of English Ordination, pp. 
140-152.) 

In taking leave of this disgraceful slander, thus 
made the main ground of the formal condemnation 



80 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

of our Orders, it is pleasing to note that there are 
instances of individual fairness among Roman 
writers who have witnessed to the truth. " We do 
not need their testimony, but we honour their can- 
dour." Most eminent among these was the Gallican 
divine Le Courayer, who wrote a dissertation in 
defence of Anglican Orders — and afterward a de- 
fence of his dissertation — containing perhaps the 
most thorough refutation of Roman attacks which 
has ever been made. 

Dr. Lingard, too, the Roman Catholic historian 
of England, having stated the consecration of 
Parker, December 17, 1559, by Barlow, Scory, Cover- 
dale, and Hodgskin, adds (vol. vii., note 1) : "The 
ceremony was performed, though with a little vari- 
ation, according to the Ordinal of Edward VI. 
Two of the Consecrators, Barlow and Hodgskin, 
had been ordained Bishops according to the Roman 
Pontifical, the other two according to the reformed 
Ordinal. Of this consecration on the 1 7th of Decem- 
ber, there can be no doubt ; perhaps, in the interval 
between the refusal of the Catholic Prelates, 1 and 
the performance of the ceremony, some meeting 
may have taken place at the Nag's Head, which 
gave rise to the story."] [Ante, p. 66.) 

1 By refusal, I presume Lingard means refusal to take the 
Oath of Supremacy. 



iv.] OBJECTIONS TO ANGLICAN ORDERS. 81 



LECTURE IV. 

(Chapter VIII. p. 242.) 

GENERAL VIEW OF ROMAN OBJECTIONS TO ANGLI- 
CAN orders — continued. 

I. Characteristic of objections of a more argumentative kind. 
II. Omission of certain words and ceremonies from Or- 
dinal. 1. In ordination of Priests. 2. In Episcopal 
ordination. III. Failure of Intention. 1. True and 
false doctrine of Intention. 2. Evidence as to the In- 
tention of the English Church. 

I. Characteristic of Objections of a more 

Argumentative Kind. 

The objections, other than those which are 
merely declamatory, or which relate to the fact of 
succession, have, in general, the characteristic that 
they either are improperly applied to Orders, or 
are suicidal. They depend upon some previous 
question, or they apply to Roman Orders as well as 
to Anglican. 

II. Omission of Certain Words and Ceremo- 

nies from Ordinal. 

1. In Ordination of Priests. — In the Roman 

Pontifical five steps appear in Priestly ordination. 

(a) Laying on of hands by the Bishop and 
assisting Priests, followed by the prayer for celes- 
tial gifts upon those chosen to the Priesthood, 
" Quos ad presbyterii munus elegit." 

(b) Investiture with Stole and Chasuble. 

(c) Anointing of the Priest's hands. 

(d) Delivery of Paten and Chalice with the 

(6) 



82 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

words, "Accipe potestatem offerre Sacrificium Deo, 
missamque celebrare tam pro vivis quam pro de- 
functis." 

(e) Near the end of the service another imposi- 
tion of hands, with the words, " Accipe Spiritum 
Sanctum : quorum remiseris peccata," etc. 

The changes introduced into Edward's Ordinal 
were substantially : (i) the omission of b and c } 
investiture and unction ; (2) the use of the prayer 
for gifts for those chosen to the Priesthood, with- 
out this first imposition of hands ; (3) the combi- 
nation of the second imposition of hands as in e — 
accompanied by that of the Priests — with the words, 
" Receive the Holy Ghost," etc., and with the 
charge to be a faithful dispenser of the Word and 
Sacraments, and with the delivery of the Bible — 
and, in 1549, with delivery of Paten and Chalice, 
which was omitted in 1552. 

The question is whether these changes invalidate 
ordination. Certainly the right of each Church to 
frame its own Liturgy, within the bounds of the 
common faith, cannot be disputed ; and as to what 
is essential in ordination, it is equally certain that 
from the beginning, the laying on of hands by an 
ordainer who was himself rightly ordained, accom- 
panied by any words that sufficed to convey the 
formal intention of the Church, has been held 
sufficient both as to matter and form to a valid 
ordination. 

With regard to the changes, they certainly are not 
of the essence of ordination. • The investiture and 
anointing appear about a. d. 600, but were absent 
at Rome in the ninth century and in the East al- 
together. The delivery of paten and chalice with 
Accipe Potestatem } etc., was unknown, word or thing, 
in the Latin Pontifical before a. d. iooo, and to 
the Eastern altogether. 

As to the substitution of the charge to dispense 






iv.] OBJECTIONS TO ANGLICAN ORDERS. 83 

and minister the Word and Sacraments for the 
words conferring the power to offer Sacrifice, it is 
only necessary to say at present, that in whatever 
sense the Eucharist is a Sacrifice, the authority to 
minister the Eucharist, expressly given, carries the 
power to offer that Sacrifice ; and that if no Priest 
can be constituted without the words Accipe Potes- 
tatem, etc., and the delivery of paten and chalice, 
then neither Greeks nor Romans had a Priest for 
nearly a thousand years. 

Again, it is charged that prior to 1662 we omit- 
ted the word Priest, so that the purpose of ordina- 
tion was indefinite. On the contrary, the express 
words, " these thy servants now called to the office 
of priesthood," occur in the Ordinals of 1549 and 
1552 precisely as in the Roman form. 

2. In Episcopal Ordination. — The case is 
similar or stronger with respect to Bishops. We 
have dropped certain ceremonies, e. g., unction of 
head and hands. The Eastern Church never knew 
such custom ; nor the ancient African, nor Rome 
itself in Episcopal consecrations until about a. d. 
500. We have dropped the custom of delivering 
the Ring, the Mitre, and, since 1552, the Pastoral 
staff. These may or may not be considered edify- 
ing, but certainly they are not essential ceremo- 
nies. We have retained the delivery of the Gospels 
— included in the delivery of the Bible — but, instead 
of having them laid on the neck or head, they are 
delivered into the hands, a change more rational, 
indeed, but certainly not material. 

The omission of the word Bishop, prior to 1662, 
does not make the purpose of the ordination indefi- 
nite, when all the circumstances make the intention 
unmistakeable. The same omission is chargeable 
to the Roman Pontifical, and is properly defended 
by Roman writers as non-essential. Vasquez says 
of the Roman Rite: "Although the word Bishop 



84 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

is not in that form, yet the other circumstances 
accompanying the form sufficiently express it." If 
Vasquez is right as to the Roman use, as he cer- 
tainly is, it is hard to see that the English use is 
wrong ; a glass house is proverbially a bad place to 
throw stones from. 

III. Failure of Intention. 

Besides matter and form, there is also the further 
requisite of a sufficient intention in order to a valid 
ordination. It is to be inquired, therefore, what a 
sufficient intention is, and whether this attends the 
English ordinations. 

i. True and False Doctrine of Intention. — 
The intention required is that of the Church as 
expressed in her formal acts, and not that of the 
minister who ordains. 

Private opinions or purposes of the individual 
ordainer cannot affect the validity of an act which 
does not depend upon his power or will, but on 
the promise of Christ. Popes like Alexander VIII. 
may tell us that a minister invalidates an act by 
withdrawing from it his interior intention ; but 
common sense, and the mere mischief of such a 
doctrine, put it aside as preposterous. No contract 
in the ordinary business of life would be worth a 
straw if the reserved intention of the parties could 
be alleged to abrogate their expressed intention. 

The soberer schoolmen, and the Council of Trent 
itself, limit the required intention to the virtual 
intention to do as the Church does. Even this 
goes beyond the mark, unless the outward acts be 
taken as evidence of the inward intention. This, 
indeed, is the true principle — that the intention of 
the ordainer is to be presumed to be the intention 
of the Church as expressed by the words and acts 
authoritatively ordered. 



iv.] OBJECTIONS TO ANGLICAN ORDERS. 85 

This brings us to the only serious question in- 
volved in the objection, whether the intention of 
the Church of England as expressed in her formu- 
laries is to confer the order of the Priesthood 
according to the will of Christ and the Church 
Catholic. 

2. Evidence as to the Intention of the Eng- 
lish Ghurch. — It is charged on the Roman side, 
and to some extent on the Eastern side also, that 
we have substituted preaching ministers for sacri- 
ficing Priests. 

Speaking of tendencies and popular belief, it 
may be true to say that before the Reformation the 
idea of Sacrifice outweighed the idea of Sacrament ; 
and that since the Reformation, the idea of Sacra- 
ment has to some extent, in the Anglican Com- 
munion, overbalanced the idea of Sacrifice. 1 But 
the question here is neither of tendencies nor of 
popular beliefs, but of the intention of the Church 
as such ; i.e., speaking authoritatively. And the 
evidence that the Church of England has laid aside 
the Catholic doctrine of Sacrifice, and that she has 
no intention of ordaining Priests duly qualified to 
offer such Sacrifice as Catholic doctrine calls for, 
is quite insufficient. The Church of England con- 

1 Owing, no doubt, largely to the unfortunate, though per- 
haps natural, confusion of mind which led many to associate 
the idea of Sacrifice with that of Transubstantiation ; whereas 
the doctrine of Sacrifice is entirely independent on that of 
Transubstantiation, as is pointed out by Le Courayer with his 
usual clearness of demonstration. (Defe?ice of Dissertation on 
Anglican Ordination, II., p. 101, et seq.) But, as Scandret 
remarks in his Sacrifice the Divine Service (p. 44) : " The 
just violence of some men against the error of transubstanti- 
ation made them jealous of any notion of a Sacrifice, and 
transported them, as it were, out of their sense and under- 
standing. " So that it was no wonder that many forgot what 
Leslie, in his introduction to that admirable little book, bids 
them remember, that the Eucharist only becomes a Sacrament 
by being first a Sacrifice, {lb., 8, 9.) 



APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. 



LECT. 



fers the office of the Priesthood by name, and, in 
conferring it, specifies the functions of absolving 
from sin, of preaching the Word, and of dispensing 
and ministering the Sacraments. 

At the same time there are omitted the words 
which confer authority to offer Sacrifice in the sense 
in which the mediaeval doctrine taught it ; and the 
grounds on which that omission is made are very 
clearly expressed in the Thirty-first Article of Relig- 
ion ; viz., that the Offering of Christ once made is that 
perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction 
for all the sins of the whole world, both original and 
actual ; and there is none other satisfaction for sin, 
but that alone. Wherefore the sacrifices of Masses, 
wherein it was commonly said that the Priest did 
offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have 
remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables 
and dangerous deceits. Plainly, then, that doctrine 
of Sacrifice which was laid aside was the doctrine 
that the Mass was a Sacrifice wherein Christ w r as 
immolated 1 and offered as a propitiation for sins ; 

1 That this word does not lack authoritative sanction in the 
Roman use at least since the Council of Trent, which may be 
presumed to have expressed what was current in that use when 
the Church of England is claimed to have abandoned the idea 
of Sacrifice, appears from the following teaching. 

"He then, as the Holy Synod has defined, ordained them 
Priests, and commanded them, and their successors in the 
Ministry, to immolate and offer in sacrifice His precious body 
and blood." 

"If therefore with pure hearts, etc., we immolate and offer 
in sacrifice this most holy victim we shall," etc. — Catechism 
of the Council of Trent (pp. 174, 175). 

" If the sacrifices of the old law . . . were so accept- 
able, . . . what may we not hope from the efficacy of a 
sacrifice in which is immolated and offered no less a victim than 
He of whom a voice from heaven twice proclaimed, ' This is 
my beloved Son/ " etc. — lb. (p. 173). 

Bellarmine also (L>e Missa, Lib. I. cap. xii.) thus urges the 
necessity of this immolation: " Christi corpus, ut in ccena 
re ipsa adest, victima quaedam est ; ergo aliqua praecedente 



iv.] OBJECTIONS TO ANGLICAN ORDERS. 87 

and by virtue whereof was procured not only par- 
don for the living, but also relief for the dead from 
the penalties of sin committed during life. 

[If the doctrine of the Roman Church is not that 
to which, at the time of the Reformation, and sub- 
sequently, so much exception has been taken, then 
it may perhaps be considered that the English 
Church has been over cautious in the measures taken 
to guard against a wrong conception of the idea of 
Sacrifice. But in estimating her intention we have 
to take into account not merely the authoritative 
statements of the Council of Trent — which, indeed, 
were formulated after the ground of the Church of 
England was taken in this matter by the change in 
the Ordinal — but also the teaching of the day, and 
the prevalence of errors, which had great need to be 
corrected by the emphatic and unmistakeable asser- 
tion of the all-sufficiency of the Sacrifice of Christ. 

One of the difficulties in Roman controversy is 
that words which may have been authoritatively 
formulated in one sense are in common use and 
understanding accepted, and apparently allowed to 
be practically accepted, in another sense — a remark 
which seems to be justified by the example of such 
words as immolation and victim, as well as sacrifice 
itself. It is easily intelligible to the candid and 
charitable mind, well informed in regard to the 

immolatione victima factum est. Quaero, quae fuerit ilia im- 
molatio ? Dices ; Immolatio crucis. At cum primum Apos- 
toli participarunt ista victimam, nondum Christus in cruce 
fuerat immolatus. Praeterea neque nunc victima, quae est in 
altari potest dici facta per immolationem crucis : nam ilia im- 
molatio semel tantum facta est, et victima per earn facta paulo 
post desiit esse victima. . . . Cum igitur victima per 
immolationem crucis facta, desierit esse victima, si iterum 
Christi corpus incipit esse victima, debet alia immolatione id 
fieri. Sed immolatio crucis non potest repeti ; alia igitur nova 
requiritur immolatio. Quare aut immolatio, quae victimam 
ponit in altari, seu in sacra ccena, est ipsa actio, celebratioque 
mysterii Eucharistiae : aut non est in sacra ccena ulla victima." 



88 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

proper sense of words, and the history of their use, 
that certain terras may have a harmless and even 
justifiable meaning ; but it is not so obvious to the 
ordinary mind, especially when excited by contro- 
versy, or inflamed either by enthusiasm or hostil- 
ity, that words are not intended to mean what they 
are commonly understood to mean. Nor has it 
been unheard of, that our opponents in this and 
other controversies on that side, when pressed with 
the evil of the practical understanding of their doc- 
trine, should take refuge in such an exposition of 
their standards as leaves little to be desired from a 
Catholic point of view. If only words could be al- 
ways used in their proper sense, the opportunity of 
erroneous understanding would of course be reduced 
to a minimum ; but when evils of dangerous impor- 
tance prevail in consequence of such erroneous 
understanding, and of the improper use of proper 
words, it may be necessary sometimes even to reject 
the words in order to cure the evil, though there is 
at the same time no intention to reject the truth 
which those words in their proper sense contain. 
Courayer, who has dealt with the controversies in 
this matter with a charity and largeness of mind 
which are truly admirable, calls attention to the fact 
that the English divines, while they are cautious 
about the use of the word Sacrifice — even to the ex- 
tent, sometimes, of reprobation — yet distinctly teach 
the very substance of all that is involved in the 
Catholic doctrine of Sacrifice. * And the reason is 
plain ; because the true Catholic doctrine of Sacri- 
fice has been so obscured, perverted, and misrepre- 
sented, that in view of such associations it seemed 
to derogate from the sufficiency of the Sacrifice of 
Christ. And this is exactly the position of the 
Church of England itself, as teaching the substance 

1 Defeitce of Dissertation on Anglican Ordination, Williams 
translation, II. , pp. 146-161. 



iv.] OBJECTIONS TO ANGLICAN ORDERS. 89 

of the Catholic doctrine of Sacrifice and rejecting 
those errors which had arisen from a misconception 
of it. Taking the current teaching of the day in 
regard to Sacrifice, in connection with the doctrine 
of transubstantiation, with its apparent implication 
of the necessity of a real slaying of the victim in 
order to the procurement of the real body and blood 
thereof ; seeing the danger, and the actual miscon- 
ceptions resulting from the understanding of im- 
molation, not so much in its proper and original 
sense of an accompaniment to sacrifice, as in the 
common acceptation of actual killing ; and dread- 
ing the evil of that system which prostituted the 
Mass to the ends of covetousness by making it a 
propitiation for the dead as well as the living — it 
is not surprising that it should have been thought 
necessary to guard thoroughly against what certainly 
seemed to contradict the fundamental principle of 
the Gospel ; viz., the completeness of the one, only 
true Sacrifice of Christ as a satisfaction or propitia- 
tion for the sins of the whole world.] At a period, 
too, when Doctors were found who taught that our 
Lord had died upon the Cross only to atone for 
original sin, and that it was the Church that offered 
the Sacrifice of Christ for the actual sins of men, 
there was certainly good reason for such a wording 
of the services as should effectually shut out so 
monstrous a doctrine. 1 



1 " Our divines, indeed/' says Courayer, "have always de- 
nied these accusations. But without maintaining the errors 
they are charged with, they have given sufficient reason for 
the imputation by the inaccuracy of their expressions, the con- 
fusion of their ideas, several ridiculous questions, and the 
figurative and hyperbolical ways of speaking with which they 
have perplexed the matter. For what can one think to see 
Cathari?t draw a sort of parallel between the Sacrifice of the 
Cross and that of the Mass, and attributing to the one the 
remission of sins committed before Baptism, and to the other 
of those committed after it ? What can any one imagine to 



9 o APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

And, on the other hand, the memory of Christ's 
sacrifice, as the prayer of consecration speaks ; and 
that this memory is no untrue figure of a thing 
absent, as the Homily speaks, are words which can^ 
not be confined to mere subjective recollection ; 
especially when taken in connection with the well- 
known theological meaning of the word memory, as 
signifying the offering or presentation to the Father 
of that which is mystically, though truly, the Body 
and Blood of Christ, as a memorial of that one 
past Sacrifice now effectively pleaded by His in- 
stitution on earth, as it is meritoriously and author- 
itatively pleaded in Heaven by Him Who ever 
liveth to make intercession for us. 

In short, if by the word Sacrifice is intended the 
effectual representation of the one Sacrifice, the 
Priesthood of the Anglican Church are, by the 
formularies of that Church, authorized to offer it. 
They are not authorized to offer it in the sense 

see Conink seriously propose the question whether by conse- 
crating the Eucharist between the Death and Resurrection of 
Christ, he would really have died in the Eucharist ; and to 
hear Harding say that Christ really shed His Blood twice, at 
the last Supper and upon the Cross ? What can one say 
when Soto and Pigbius tell us that the fruit of Christ's Passion 
being refused us on account of the sins we every day commit, 
Pie left us a new Sacrifice for the expiation of those sins? 
What can one judge of those that by attributing particular 
virtues to this action would make us believe that they look 
upon this Sacrifice as in itself meritorious ? . . . Lastly, 
how can we excuse those that, confounding the Reality with 
the Representation, the remembrance of a thing with the 
thing itself, seem to say with Harding, either that Christ is 
sacrificed afresh, as often as His Death is offered, or that this 
Sacrifice is a supplement and reiteration of that of the Cross ? 
What is the tendency of all these questions, and of many 
others equally ridiculous, but to make people believe that 
Christ was really and actually sacrificed afresh in the Eucha- 
rist, and that this Sacrifice had as proper a merit as that of the 
Cross?" — Courayer, Defence of Dissertation (ut supr % , II. 
145, 146O 



IV.] OBJECTIONS TO ANGLICAN ORDERS. 9 r 

of an iteration or repetition ; in the sense of being 
as such a propitiation or satisfaction for sin ; as 
in mitigation of the pains of Purgatory ; or as 
an atonement for actual sin, as distinguished from 
the Sacrifice of Christ for original sin. And, so 
far as the evidence goes, it seems plainly to show 
that the intention of the English Church at the 
Reformation, as exhibited by Ordinal, Articles, and 
Eucharistic Office, was to repudiate a notion of 
Sacrifice which involved these errors, and not to 
reject that Catholic doctrine of Sacrifice which was 
inconsistent with them. 

The Fathers speak plainly of the offering of the 
Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, and of 
the Eucharist as a Sacrifice ; yet, surely, not in the 
corrupt mediaeval sense, but in the mystical sense, 
as commemorative and representative — a memory 
of a Sacrifice, as from Cyprian onwards the Fathers 
call it. [This remark, however, is not to be inter- 
preted as meaning that the idea of the sacrificial 
character of the Eucharist originated with Cyprian 
or his time, and received no sanction from even 
earlier Fathers. It is a favourite notion of some 
modern critics of Church doctrine and order, that 
from the beginning these were not so, but that they 
are the result of a certain Ecclesiasticism which 
first flowered forth in Cyprian. The Historic Epis- 
copate, indeed, may be graciously conceded as a 
harmless fact ; but we are not to imagine that the 
fact involved the idea of Divine institution and 
authority until Cyprian discovered such significance. 
So with regard to the sacrificial aspect of the 
Eucharist, we are gravely advised that this results 
from a departure from the original righteousness 
of the purest ages of the Church, for which Cyprian 
is chiefly to be held responsible ; whereas, in fact, 
Cyprian did but formulate what he had received. 

Nor can we think that this sacrificial aspect of 



9 2 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

the Eucharist was new in his time, when Origen 
tells us that " we eat the Bread that was offered unto 
God with prayer and thanksgiving for His gifts, and 
then made a kind of holy Body by prayer ; " when 
Irenseus tells us that Christ " took that Bread which 
w T as made of His creature, and gave thanks, say- 
ing, This is my Body, . . . and thus taught 
the new Oblation of the New Testament, which the 
Church, receiving from the Apostles, offers through- 
out the world unto God ; " when Justin Martyr tells 
us that Christians are taught that they should per- 
form their sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving to 
God " in that thankful remembrance of their food, 
both dry and liquid, wherein also is commemorated 
the Passion which the Son of God suffered by him- 
self ; " and when this Oblation of Bread and Wine 
is implied in St. Paul's parallel of the Lord's 
Supper and the Sacrifices of the Gentiles ; the 
table of Devils being so called by reason of viands 
offered to Devils, and the table of the Lord indi- 
cating in like manner the viands offered to God 
— such offering being not separable in our imagi- 
nation from that institution whereby we do show 
the Lord's death. (See Joseph Mede, Works, 
Book II., chapter viii.) So that the mystical Offer- 
ing of the Body and Blood of Christ, through the 
symbolic or sacramental means of the material 
oblations of the Church in the Eucharist — or, as 
Mede expresses it (chapter vi.), the offering, in the 
Christian Sacrifice, of the thanksgiving of the 
Church, through Christ commemorated in the sym- 
bols of Bread and Wine, as by a medium whereby 
to find acceptance — is an idea not evolved out of 
the inner consciousness of Cyprian, but one which 
harmonizes with the language of the earlier Fathers 
to whom reference has been made, and even of St. 
Paul himself, as well as with that of those who fol- 
lowed ; as of Chrysostom, for example, who says that 



iv.] OBJECTIONS TO ANGLICAN ORDERS. 93 

the Eucharist is a Sacrifice indeed, but rather a me- 
morial of the Sacrifice. Nor does it appear, either, 
that the idea of Sacrifice has ever been until later 
times dissociated from the Eucharist, or that the 
Sacrifice which has been recognized during the ear- 
lier ages has been other than memorial or represent- 
ative in its character.] Even so late a schoolman 
as Peter Lombard says that the Eucharist is indeed 
" called a Sacrifice," but that it is so called " because 
it is a memory and representation of the true Sacri- 
fice. " ' And English divines have consistently 
taught in the same line. 

Bishop Bramhall, for instance, declares the terms 
of ordination to " give sufficient power to sacrifice, 
so far as an Evangelical Priest doth or can sacri- 
fice ; that is a commemorative Sacrifice ; or a rep- 
resentative Sacrifice ; or to apply the Sacrifice of 
Christ by such means as God has appointed." 

Bishop Beveridge affirms that " the Sacrament of 
the Lord's Supper may as properly be called a Sac- 
rifice as any that ever was offered, except that 
which was offered by Christ Himself ; for this, 
indeed, was the only true expiatory Sacrifice : those 
under the Law were only typical, and this is a com- 
memorative Sacrifice." 

1 Bellarmine's comment upon Peter Lombard's calling the 
Sacrifice a representation of the true Sacrifice and holy immo- 
lation, is that Lombard uses the word immolation in the sense 
of killing, in which sense, indeed, " Christ was only once im- 
molated. " So with regard to the Fathers who call the Eucharist 
a Sacrifice in the sense of a Memorial, or Sacramental, or Repre- 
sentative Sacrifice, affirming the one only immolation of Christ 
upon the Cross, he says they speak of the immolation of Christ 
in his own kind or species — " in propria specie" — and refer to 
a bloody immolation which was "once only ; " but now it is 
done, not properly, but by representation — " Non proprie sed 
per representationem." {De Missa, Lib. I., cap. xv.) Upon 
which it seems obvious to remark, that if Bellarmine and others 
had been content to make the language of the Fathers their 
own, they would not have been obliged to make so many ex- 
planations. 



94 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

Bishop Ridley says : " It is well said, if it be 
rightly understood, that the Priest doth offer an 
unbloody Sacrifice of the Body of Christ ; ... it 
is offered after a certain manner, and in a mystery, 
as a representation of that Bloody Sacrifice. " 

And in the recent words of even the late Dean 
Goode, who might be considered an unwilling wit- 
ness : " It is strictly true, in a sense, that the real 
Sacrifice of the Cross, the true Body and Blood of 
Christ, are offered up in the Eucharist, not by itera- 
tion, but in the prayers of the faithful ; nay, more, 
remission of sins can only be obtained by the offer- 
ing up of the true Sacrifice of the Cross." And 
again : " The Fathers, as a body, speak (and 
justly) of the offering up of the real Body and 
Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, and attribute the 
impetration of remission of sins to such a Sacrifice 
alone." 

[Impetration is the act of obtaining by prayer. 
And so the Eucharist appears to be neither in itself 
a propitiation, nor merely equivalent to our own 
prayers, but to be, by Divine appointment, an act 
or means by which we obtain the benefits of that 
Sacrifice, which by It we commemorate and rep- 
resent ; and if this teaching be consistent with the 
formularies of the English Church, as it plainly is, 
the intention of the Church of England to author- 
ize its Priesthood to offer Sacrifice should be suf- 
ficiently shown. 

In view of the restoration in the American Book 
of Common Prayer of the Oblation in the Eucha- 
ristic Service, it would seem evident that the in- 
tention of the American Church in the matter of 
Priesthood and Sacrifice is even less open to cavil 
than that of the English Church. Certainly, had 
the English Church retained this bulwark, no 
weapon formed against her intention in this regard 
could have prospered. That cavils should be want- 



iv.] OBJECTIONS TO ANGLICAN ORDERS. 95 

ing entirely, is, of course, more than could be ex- 
pected ; but, whether they come from without or 
from within, the Prayer of Consecration, as we have 
it, is sufficient to neutralize them ; and its use has 
been, and is, a continuing education to those whose 
former associations may have predisposed them to 
such cavils. Nor can the consideration of this part 
of our subject be better closed than with a brief 
quotation from one, who by the singular Grace and 
Providence of God was the chief instrument in the 
accomplishment of this restoration, and whose Dis- 
course upon the Holy Eucharist contains the best pos- 
sible comment upon the true significance of the 
restoration. 

" It appears, therefore, that the Eucharist is not 
only a Sacrament, . . . but also a true and proper 
Sacrifice, commemorative of the original Sacrifice 
and Death of Christ, ... a memorial made be- 
fore God, to put Him in mind. . . . From this 
account, the Priesthood of the Christian Church 
evidently appears. As a Priest, Christ offered Him- 
self a Sacrifice to God, in the mystery of the 
Eucharist — that is, under the symbols of bread and 
wine — and He commanded His Apostles to do as 
He had done. If His offering were a Sacrifice, 
theirs was also. His Sacrifice was original, theirs 
commemorative. His was meritorious through His 
merit who offered it ; theirs drew all its merit from 
the relation it had to His Sacrifice and appoint- 
ment. His, from the excellency of its own nature, 
was a true and sufficient propitiation for the sins of 
the whole world ; theirs procures remission of sins 
only through the reference it has to His Atone- 
ment. 

" When Christ commanded His Apostles to cele- 
brate the Holy Eucharist, in remembrance of Him, 
He with the command gave them power to do so ; 
that is, He communicated His own Priesthood to 



9 6 



APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. 



[lect. 



them in such measure and degree as He saw neces- 
sary for His Church ; to qualify them to be His 
representatives ; to offer the Christian Sacrifice of 
bread and wine as a memorial before God the 
Father of His offering Himself once for all, of 
His passion and of His death ; to render the Al- 
mighty propitious to us for His sake ; and as a 
means of obtaining, through faith in Him, all the 
blessings and benefits of His redemption." — Bishop 
Seabury's Discourses (1795, I., pp. 177, 178.)] 



LECTURE V. 

(Chapter VIII p. 277.) 

GENERAL VIEW OF ROMAN OBJECTIONS TO ANGLI- 
CAN orders — continued. 



I. Want of Jurisdiction. I. As not being derived from the 
Pope. 2. As being derived from the Crown. II. Invali- 
dated by heresy or schism. I. Irrelevance of the objec- 
tion. 2. Actual state of the case in regard to schism. 
III. Want of infallibility. 1. Meaning of the objection. 
2. Eastern version of the objection. 3. Assumption 
involved in these objections. 4. The grounds of the 
sufficient authority of the message committed to the An- 
glican Clergy. 

I. Want of Jurisdiction. 

But supposing the fact of valid Orders in the 
English Church, we are further attacked by the 
Romans in respect to the jurisdiction or mission 
pertaining to Orders. In other words, it is said, 
granting that you have valid Orders, you have no 
lawful or canonical right to exercise the power of 
order. Order is the power to perform the sacred 
functions of the Ministry ; Jurisdiction is the law- 
ful right of exercising that power. It is involved 
in the nature of the Church as a spiritual kingdom, 



v.] OBJECTIONS TO ANGLICAN ORDERS. 97 

that spiritual jurisdiction over this or that part of 
Christ's flock should emanate from the spiritual 
authorities of the Church herself ; and any exercise 
of the power of Order in defiance of the laws of the 
Church, even though it may be in some sense valid, 
is essentially schismatical and irregular. To charge 
us, therefore, with want of Jurisdiction, is little less 
serious than to charge us with want of Orders. But 
the charge is brought against us on two grounds. 

1. That we do not Derive our Jurisdiction 
from the Pope. — With regard to this it is to be 
said, that the claim to universal jurisdiction on the 
part of the Pope is simply a branch of those usur- 
pations which depend on the question of the Papal 
supremacy. Jurisdiction of Bishops over Clergy is 
matter of Divine right. Jurisdiction of Bishops 
over Bishops is entirely dependent on human regu- 
lation, and therefore is in itself alterable. As far 
as concerns the official authority of their Order, 
Bishops are by Divine Constitution equal. Juris- 
diction of Metropolitans over Bishops ; of Patriarchs 
over Metropolitans ; of one Bishop, as of Rome, 
over all Patriarchs and other Bishops, might, if con- 
fined within rightful limits, be agreed to for the sake 
of expediency if thought expedient, but can rest 
on no higher ground. The claim to the jurisdic- 
tion of the Pope over English Bishops, was in some 
sense, yet never wholly, acquiesced in by the Eng- 
lish Church and nation ; and when at length pushed 
to an exorbitant degree, and made the source of 
intolerable oppression and evil, it was rejected. 

The claim of jurisdiction on the part of the Bish- 
op of Rome, as by Divine right, so that no Bishop 
or Priest can act as such rightfully and validly with- 
out deriving mission from him, rests even with such 
a writer as Bellarmine, on grounds so ingeniously 
imaginary, that really to state them is to refute 
them ; e. g., that while all the Apostles received 



98 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect, 

their mission immediately from our Lord, that mis- 
sion was personal to all the others, and transmissible 
to the future Church and ministry only through St. 
Peter. And to turn from Divine to human right — 
without even discussing whether or not we were 
justified in rejecting what were really mediaeval 
usurpations, it is certain that the present ultramon- 
tane conception of the Papacy in all points, the 
matter of Episcopal mission included, has been so 
transformed as to constitute a perfectly new and 
distinct claim, which means nothing less than the 
conversion of what is really matter of Ecclesiastical, 
and even partly of State arrangement, into a funda- 
mental dogma of a Divinely appointed centre of all 
valid Orders and all true faith — of a single earthly 
source, in fact, of grace and truth to the whole 
Church. And if this be the real nature of these 
claims, we are bound to reject them in the very 
name of the Christian faith itself. 

What theory of corporate unity for the whole 
Church will work in fact, is of course another ques- 
tion. But the question of the practical working of 
a single corporate Church throughout the world, in 
combination with independent and educated Nation- 
alities, on the basis of a union upon the primitive 
principle of the unity of the Episcopate, has never 
yet been fairly before the Nations of modern Euro- 
pean and American civilization, nor even before the 
Eastern Church. The first approach to realizing, 
under modern circumstances, the faint beginning 
of the revival of that Primitive and Scriptural idea, 
was in the Lambeth Conference of 1867. 

[It is worth while to observe the difference be- 
tween the Monarchical and the Republican ideas 
involved in the Papal and in the Anglican systems. 
The Papacy is an absolute monarchy. The Primi- 
tive principle of an Episcopate of equal authority, 
on which the Anglican system is based, involves — 



v.] OBJECTIONS TO ANGLICAN ORDERS. 99 

not a democracy, but — a Republic of Monarchies ; 
an universal federation of co-ordinate Sovereignties, 
wherein the individual Bishop, subordinate to the 
College, on the basis of the common faith and order 
of the original constitution of the Church of Christ, 
rules his own Diocese. Thus the Episcopate, as an 
Order, instead of a single despot, fulfils its proper 
function as the Divinely appointed centre of unity 
— the Bishops demonstrating their communion with 
Christ, the one Head of the Kingdom as a whole, 
by their communion with each other in the Faith 
and Sacraments of His appointment; and the mem- 
bers of the Church demonstrating their communion 
with Christ, by their communion with their respec- 
tive Bishops. The distribution of the Episcopate 
into Provincial or Patriarchal arrangements, is by 
no means contrary to this system ; but has been 
used as the best practical substitute for the full ac- 
complishment of the system, and is properly tribu- 
tary to it.] 

Meanwhile, as respects our own Orders, our 
Clergy derive their jurisdiction from their own 
Bishops ; and these from the Bishops who went 
before them, back to the beginning ; as every Chris- 
tian Church whatever derived theirs, without one 
thought of the Bishop of Rome, for some twelve 
hundred years, and as the whole Eastern Church 
derives hers to this day. If the Bishop of Rome 
owns Eastern Orders without demur in the matter 
of jurisdiction — as he did by inviting the Eastern 
Bishops to the Vatican Council of 1869 — he ought 
by parity of reason to own our Orders also. In 
respect to the refusal to recognize the Pope as the 
source of jurisdiction, the position of the two is 
identical. 

But it is further objected to our jurisdiction, 
that 

2. It is Derived from the Crown. — In con- 



ioo APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

sidering this objection, observe, first, the distinction 
between spiritual and coercive jurisdiction ; the 
former being from Christ alone, and belonging to 
Bishops as His officers ; the latter being derived 
from the State, and belonging to Bishops, in so far 
as they have it, as a gift from the State, as officers 
of the State, for State purposes ; a gift quite distinct 
from and additional to their spiritual jurisdiction, 
and not necessarily inconsistent with it ; though 
sometimes, perhaps, it has led to confusion in the 
minds of those who did not understand or appre- 
ciate the distinction. 

Observe, secondly, the distinction between the ex- 
ercise of State authority dictating the faith and 
spiritual discipline of the Church — which would be 
usurpation; and such exercise of authority on the 
part of the State, as may be directed (a) to the over- 
sight of the Clergy considered as men who are re- 
sponsible for such discharge of the functions of 
their office as shall conduce to the benefit of the 
people, or (b) to the conservation of the temporal 
interests of the Church, and the safety of the trusts 
involved in it. 

[(a) The exercise of State authority for the en- 
forcement of the performance of the duties belong- 
ing to the ministry as such, when they may through 
negligence or unfaithfulness fail to discharge them, 
proceeds not upon the principle that the State has 
jurisdiction in spiritual matters, but upon the prin- 
ciple that the officers of the Church are subjects of 
the State, and that it is incumbent upon the State to 
see that all of its members, each in his several voca- 
tion, fulfil the obligations imposed upon them by 
their position. There is in this attitude neither 
any claim whatever to spiritual jurisdiction as such, 
nor yet anything at all peculiar to the Church of 
England. In fact, ever since the Roman Emperors 
embraced Christianity, civil rulers in all countries 



v.] OBJECTIONS TO ANGLICAN ORDERS. 101 

have regarded themselves as under obligation of 
conscience in this respect ; thereby involving them- 
selves and the Church in perpetually recurring 
troubles, until the founders of the American civil 
system cut the knot of the difficulties by assuming 
the positive independence of the civil and religious 
jurisdictions. 

Neither (b) is there the slightest assumption of 
spiritual jurisdiction as such in the exercise of State 
authority as to the temporalities of the Church, 
which, being property, must be held by the Church, 
as all property is held, whether by societies or in- 
dividuals, subject to the law of the State ; and, 
although there is included in the exercise of this 
authority the incidental right to pass upon questions 
in regard to the faith or order of the Church, as 
these questions may result from the tenure of bene- 
fices or endowments, yet it is obvious that the State 
does not here assume to determine as a guide to the 
conscience of its members, what faith or order the 
Church ought to hold or administer, but what faith 
and order the Church does, as a matter of fact, hold 
and require ; so that it may be ascertained whether 
those who have been given certain rights for the 
maintenance of this faith and order are or are not 
using their rights for that purpose.] 

It appears from these observations, first, that 
there is a certain kind of jurisdiction which English 
Bishops derive from the Crown, which is properly 
derived from it, and which is not inconsistent with 
the spiritual jurisdiction ; and, secondly, that the 
Church of England is not peculiar in its subjection 
to the civil authority in regard to its temporalities, 
and in regard to the decision of questions involv- 
ing a determination as to matters of faith and 
order ; inasmuch as the belief of non-conformists is 
dealt with as freely, and in effect on the same prin- 
ciples, wherever endowments or other like circum- 



102 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

stances give a temporal side to their faith or 
discipline. 

Bearing these things in mind, and remembering 
also the impossibility of discussing in detail so volu- 
minous a subject in so short a compass, it is to be 
noted, i st, that the extreme State claims of Henry 
VIII. and Edward VI. were provoked, although not 
justified, by previous usurpations, quite as indefen- 
sible, of the Church upon the State ; 2d, that even 
the extremest claims of these two Princes, however 
monstrous, were qualified by restrictions and ad- 
missions large enough to cover a position defensible 
in principle, although the practical results of them 
or even their intention may have been indefensible ; 
and, 3d, that every one of these untenable claims 
has been since Elizabeth's time renounced and 
abolished. 

The first of these facts, too notorious to need 
proof, may be said to be only an excuse for the 
individual actors in the case ; yet it shows the 
character of transactions of that period, as the re- 
sult of a violent and temporary reaction from op- 
posite extremes, and evils intolerable. [More than 
this, it throws light upon the meaning of the claim 
to supreme headship when we consider that this 
claim was made against the Papal claim that the 
Clergy of England were to be judged, not by the 
civil laws and courts, but by the spiritual power ; 
i.e., they were amenable to the Pope, but not amen- 
able to the Crown ; so that there was a very definite 
meaning in, and a very sufficient cause for, the 
claim that the Crown was supreme over all persons 
and causes within the realm, and that no one 
should be permitted, on the plea of responsibility to 
the Pope, to escape his responsibility to the civil 
authority at home.] 

The second fact shows that principles were pre- 
served for the future, whatever usurpations were 



v.] OBJECTIONS TO ANGLICAN ORDERS. 103 

suffered in the present. The claim of the Crown, 
construed in the light of contemporaneous restric- 
tions and admissions, is, after all, equivalent to the 
formula, " All spiritual authority belongs to me ex- 
cept so far as by Divine law it does not." 

(a) The title Supreme Head of the Church was 
conceded by the Convocation of the Province of 
Canterbury, qualified with the clause, " Quantum 
per Christi legem licet." 

(b) When the Convocation of York scrupled to 
grant this title, Henry VIII. addressed to that body 
a letter (printed in full by Haddan, App. K., p. 374) 
in which he explains that he meant not by the title 
a headship over the Church, " of which, and of the 
faith and religion of the same, Christ only is 
•Head ;" but only over " all the people of England, 
ecclesiastical as well as temporal." He says fur- 
ther, iC It were too absurd for us to be called Head 
of the Church representing the Mystical Body of 
Christ, and therefore, although Ecclesia is spoken 
of in those words touched in the proeme, yet there 
is added et cleri Anglicani, which words conjoined 
restrain, by way of interpretation, the word Eccle- 
siam, and is as much as to say, the Church, i.e., the 
clergy of England. ' ' 

(c) So, too, the primary Reformation Statute of 
Henry restraining appeals to the Pope, claims " plen- 
ary whole and entire power," etc., and " jurisdiction 
to render and yield justice and final determination 
to all manner of folks, etc., within this realm, in all 
causes " — yet this is directed to the exclusion, not 
of the English Church, but of the Pope ; and is 
coupled with the assertion that for " any cause of 
the law Divine . . . or of spiritual learning, it was 
(always) declared, interpreted, and showed, by that 
part of the body politic called the Spirituality, now 
being usually called the English Church, which 
. . . hath always been thought, and is also at 



104 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

this hour, sufficient and meet of itself, without the 
intermeddling of any exterior person or persons, to 
declare and determine all such doubts, and to ad- 
minister all such offices and duties as to their rooms 
spiritual doth appertain." (24 Henry VIII., c. 12.) 

(d) The very commissions which Henry issued to 
the Bishops, licensing them among other things to 
ordain, which are perhaps the extremest of his 
assumptions on this subject ; and those issued 1 
Edward VI. contain an exception of all Divinely 
given jurisdiction. And while these commissions 
are now a mere thing of the past, not concerning 
us, they were even at the time an act of the State, 
affecting only the individuals receiving them, not 
an act of the Church. 

(e) The contemporaneous acts of the Church, 
ratified too by the State, make the case still plainer. 
In 1537, The Institution of a Christian Man declares 
in terms, that whereas the " whole power of Priests 
and Bishops is divided into the power of Orders 
and the power of jurisdiction," the latter, " about 
which alone any question had arisen," is " commit- 
ted unto Priests and Bishops by the authority of 
God's law ; " or, as in a later passage, " by Christ 
and His Apostles ; " and that the sole power of 
Christian Princes is to be "as the chief heads and 
overlookers over the said Priests and Bishops, to 
cause them to administer their office and power 
committed unto them purely and sincerely ; " add- 
ing also that Christian Princes had at various times 
given them further power and civil jurisdiction in 
certain temporal and civil matters, which they 
might, if they would, revoke. 

This document, ratified by the King's authority, 
necessarily limits the vague claims of the commis- 
sions by the precise statements of authorized ex- 
planation put forth solemnly by both Church and 
State. The Parliamentary statements of 1 Edward 



v.] OBJECTIONS TO ANGLICAN ORDERS. 105 

VI., c. 2, must in fairness share the same explana- 
tion, and are further limited by the Injunctions 
of that King, which assert the office of Priests and 
Ministers of the Church to be appointed of God. 

The third fact affecting the controversy is that 
these extravagant claims have, since the time of 
Elizabeth, been laid aside. 

The title Head of the Church, assumed by 
Henry, and retained by Edward and also by Mary, 
was exchanged for that of Supreme Governor by 
Elizabeth. The statutes of the First and Fifth Eliz- 
abeth, the Queen's Injunctions of 1559, the Thirty- 
seventh Article, referring to these Injunctions, limit 
the claim to jurisdiction to an external power to see 
justice done, and exclude expressly " the minister- 
ing of the Word and Sacraments. " And Elizabeth 
affirms that " the Royal Supremacy in things spir- 
itual means no more than this, that she, being by 
lawful succession Queen of England, all persons 
born in the realm were subjects to her and to no 
other earthly ruler." 

The Canons of 1603, in the time of James L, base 
the matter on substantially the same ground. 

" In sum," says Bishop Bramhall, " we hold our 
benefices from the King, but our offices from Christ ; 
the King doth nominate us, but Bishops do ordain 
us." 

These facts suffice to dispose of the allegation 
that English Orders have their jurisdiction from 
the Crown, and show their mission to be derived 
from Christ through Episcopal Ordination. And 
grave as are some of the complications of the pres- 
ent day, they result not so much from the exercise 
of State jurisdiction over the members of the Church 
— in which, with the observance of the limitations 
above indicated, there would be little danger — as 
they do from the fact that the membership of the 
Church and State is no longer identical, and conse- 



106 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

quently that laws and judicial decisions in regard 
to the Church may proceed in some cases from 
those who are not in communion with the Church ; 
and the danger is in the temptation to use power to 
mould the Church into such form as may be ac- 
ceptable to the people, instead of desiring to mould 
the people into the form of the Church. Yet what- 
ever the danger, it has not yet been realized ; and, 
certainly, it is a most extravagant assumption that 
the relation of the Church to the State, either his- 
torically or in apprehension, in any way affects the 
mission of its Clergy. 

II. Invalidity by Reason of Heresy or 
Schism. 

i. Irrelevance of the Objection. — That our 
Orders are invalid because given in heresy or 
schism, or both, is, of course, primarily a question 
not about the Orders themselves, but about the 
prior assumption that we really are in heresy or 
schism — which is first to be proved before it can be 
objected. 

It is worth while, however, to point out that the 
invalidity of even heretical Orders, a valid form 
being presupposed, is far from being a ruled ques- 
tion in the early Church — the actual practice of the 
Church, for nine or ten centuries, varying in the 
matter to such an extent that no principle can be 
laid down which would account for these variations. 
In respect to Schismatical Orders, also, there has 
been much the same variation. 

Besides which, the Roman Church has precluded 
herself from absolutely condemning either schis- 
matical or heretical Orders, by admitting Eastern 
Orders, which she must necessarily consider to be 
both. 

[2. Actual State of the Case in Regard to 



v,] OBJECTIONS TO ANGLICAN ORDERS. 107 

the Schism between Anglican and Roman 
Churches. — Superfluous as it is to argue the ques- 
tion of heresy or schism as affecting the validity of 
Anglican Orders, yet as in the case of the objec- 
tion of want of Jurisdiction, the charge of being in 
schism, whether by reason of heresy or for other 
cause, affects the regularity if not the validity of 
our Orders ; and the charge is to be met by show- 
ing that the schism was made not by the Anglican 
but by the Roman Church, and therefore affects the 
regularity of the Orders of the Papal emissaries into 
England, but not that of the Anglican Succession. 

The claim that Anglicans are schismatically sep- 
arated from the Roman See rests, apart from the 
claim of the Papacy to universal jurisdiction jure 
divino, mainly on three allegations : 1st, that Eng- 
land is within the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome 
as Patriarch ; 2d, that England owes its Christian- 
ity as well as its Orders to Papal missions ; 3d, 
that the English Church separated from the Roman 
at the period of the Reformation. 

With regard to the first point, it is to be observed 
that Patriarchal power, being not of Divine right 
but of human custom or institution, may even after 
its lawful establishment be lost, either as being vol- 
untarily abandoned or forfeited. And certainly the 
Patriarchal jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome, 
wherever it might have existed, has been abandoned 
ipso facto by the contradictory assertion of his uni- 
versal Pastorship and Episcopate. For these two 
claims are quite inconsistent with each other — the 
one being a claim to a limited jurisdiction over a 
certain province, the other pretending to an un- 
limited jurisdiction over the whole world ; the one 
being professedly exercised in subjection to the 
Canons, the other challenging an absolute sover- 
eignty above the Canons, to make, abrogate, suspend, 
and dispense with them at will : and not only have 



108 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

the Bishops of Rome lost their Patriarchal claim by 
this voluntary abandonment, but they have, more- 
over, forfeited it by their notorious rebellion against 
General Councils, the supreme ecclesiastical tribunal 
to which Patriarchal power was always subordinate ; 
and by their rapine, extortions, and exorbitant 
abuses. (See Bramhall's Just Vindication, Works, I., 
259-268, Anglo-Catholic Library?) 

But in point of fact the proper Patriarchal juris- 
diction of the Bishop of Rome extends to the 
regions included in the Ancient Roman sub-urbi- 
carian provinces in Southern Italy, with the islands 
of Sicily, Sardinia, etc., and does not include the 
northern provinces of Italy, much less France, 
Spain, England, etc. (See this claim explained and 
refuted by Palmer, Treatise on the Church of 
Christ, Part VII., chapter vii.) 

With regard to the second point, it assumes that 
conversion confers and perpetuates jurisdiction ; 
whereas, Bishops, once lawfully settled over those 
converted to Christianity, become by virtue of their 
consecration officially the equals of those by w T hom 
they were consecrated, and owe them no subjection. 
A nation converted to Christianity through the 
charity of a foreign Bishop doubtless owes to him 
personally great gratitude ; but that such a nation 
when formed into Churches, and governed by its 
own Bishops, comes under the jurisdiction of this 
benefactor and his successors, hardly follows. 
Gratitude is one thing : obedience is quite another 
thing. He who claims that the consecration of 
Bishops necessarily involves the reservation of obe- 
dience to the consecrators, and the continuance of 
the same relation between their successors, confuses, 
as Bishop Bramhall says, " the key of Order with the 
key of Jurisdiction. If he do thus mistake one key 
for another, he will never be able to open the right 
door. ,, 



v.] OBJECTIONS TO ANGLICAN ORDERS. 109 

(See The Apostolical Jurisdiction and Succession 
of the Episcopacy of the British Churches vindicated 
against the Objections of Dr. Wiseman, by Rev. 
William Palmer, M. A., passim.) 

With regard to the third point, that the English 
Church separated from the Communion of the 
Roman Church, it is simply untrue. The Church 
of England at the time of the Reformation " sepa- 
rated from no other body or society of Christians. 
She simply affirmed that the jurisdiction of the 
Bishop of- Rome in England was founded on no 
Divine warrant ; that it had been the result of en- 
croachments on the one side, and concessions on 
the other ; that it had been proved, after a long 
and full trial, to be burdensome to the people and 
operative of manifold evils ; that it had been en- 
dured long enough, and ought to be at once and 
forever declined. The separation, if such it were, 
was from the Court of Rome, in respect to its claim 
of jurisdiction in England, and not from the Church 
of Rome in respect to any points of faith or order 
that had been ruled by the Catholic Church." The 
imposition of the Creed of Pius IV., and the ele- 
vation by Papal authority of the " heap of opinions " 
which it contains to the level of the ancient sym- 
bol of the Catholic Faith, and as equally with it to 
be received as necessary to salvation, would indeed 
justify and demand the refusal to accept or admit 
the right of the Papacy to impose such new articles 
as terms of communion. Such refusal, however, is 
not the cause of any separation which may follow 
it, but the cause is to be found in the tyrannical 
imposition making the refusal necessary ; and the 
guilt of a consequent separation belongs on Catho- 
lic principles to the party which gives the cause of 
separation. Yet — whatever may be said abstractly 
upon the question whether this imposition does not 
vitiate the claim of the Bishop of Rome to jurisdic- 



no APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION, [lect. 

tion everywhere — not to speak, in this order of time, 
of the later developments of Immaculate Concep- 
tion and Papal Infallibility — certainly, as matter 
of fact, it does not appear that the Church of Eng- 
land forsook the Communion of those Churches 
which still deemed it for their benefit to continue 
subject to that jurisdiction ; but only that she re- 
sumed the responsibility, which rightly belonged to 
her, of governing herself and her own members 
agreeably to the Word of God and Catholic tradi- 
tion. It was not her intention, as declared at a 
later period — Canon 30, of 1603 — to forsake the 
Churches of Italy, France, Spain, Germany, or any 
such like Churches, in all things which they held 
and practised, but only to depart from them in 
those particular points wherein they were fallen 
both from themselves in their ancient integrity, and 
from the Apostolic Churches which were their first 
founders. 

And, in accordance with this temper and princi- 
ple, no bar to the admission to her own Communion 
was raised against those who were willing to con- 
form to the rules of her lawful enactment ; nor was 
it at first deemed a part of the duty of those who 
could not concur in the need and mode of the cur- 
rent reformation to refrain from that Communion. 
On the contrary, even those who were opposed to 
the changes made continued after the accession of 
Elizabeth, for ten or eleven years, to resort to their 
parish Churches, and to join in the prayers and Sac- 
raments of the Church administered under the Re- 
formed Order ; nor was this state of things changed 
until Pope Pius V. excommunicated the Queen, and 
absolved her subjects from allegiance to her ; after 
which, fearing the anathemas of the Pope, his 
adherents began to withdraw themselves from the 
Communion of the English Church and to set up 
opposing Altars under the care of Papal emissaries. 



v.] OBJECTIONS TO ANGLICAN ORDERS. in 

Thus this unnecessary, wilful, and malicious sep- 
aration created the schism in the English Church ; 
a schism in which the Pope and his adherents are 
the guilty parties — both as having given just cause 
of separation to others, while they themselves were 
actually the separating ones ; and as having ever 
since maintained that schismatical attitude. So 
that, as to this point, it appears that it is the regu- 
larity of the Roman Orders in England which is 
affected bv schism and not that of the English 
Orders — a disease not curable by a voyage across 
the Atlantic, and the transfer (cf. Palmer on the 
Church, I., 305) of Orders schismatical in England, 
to this Country, to subserve the purpose of perpetu- 
ating here the separation begun there. See the 
Continuity of the Church of England in the 16 th Cen- 
tury, by Dr. Samuel Seabury, pp. 17-26 ; and see 
the whole book on the whole controversy. Cf., also, 
Bishop Bramhall's Just Vindication of the Church 
of England, Works, Vol. I., Anglo-Catholic Library.] 

III. Waist of Infallibility. 

1. Meaning of this Objection. — The objec- 
tion that the Anglican Church delivers no infallible 
message to her Clergy would seem to be directed 
rather against what is preached, than against the 
authority to preach ; but what is intended by this 
objection appears to be that a ministry which is 
commissioned by a Church which has no infallible 
authority has no claim upon the faith and alle- 
giance of those to whom it preaches. English 
Clergy, it is said, cannot teach the Word of God as 
such, and so as to be matter of religious faith, be- 
cause they teach it as private opinion, and not as 
the infallible doctrine propounded by a present in- 
fallible Church. 

2. Eastern Version of this Objection. — This 



112 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

objection, on the Papal side lodging the infallibility 
of the Church in the Pope, is urged by some on 
the part of the Eastern Church lodging infallibil- 
ity in (Ecumenical Councils. Admitting the Apos- 
tolical Succession of our Bishops, it is argued, on 
this side, that such succession carries with it in 
truth this idea of infallibility, and that the denial 
of this idea takes all real value and meaning out of 
the succession ; but that the Church of England 
in the Thirty-nine Articles denies various points 
ruled by the seven (Ecumenical Councils, and in 
one Article denies the infallibility of General Coun- 
cils ; and holding thus, must admit that her Apos- 
tolical Succession is futile. 

3. Assumption Involved in these Objec- 
tions. — Both of these arguments, Papal and East- 
ern, rest upon the assumption that a rightful 
ministry of the Word carries with it, and requires 
to its own existence, the possession not merely of 
infallible truth originally revealed, but of a contin- 
uous and formal infallibility in the application of 
that truth to all times and persons. 

But upon this assumption, the argument would 
apply to our opponents as well as to ourselves ; for 
there is no conceivable infallibility in the communi- 
cation by human means of that which in its original 
revelation may be admitted to have been infallibly 
true. The believer in Papal infallibility can have 
no infallible proof of Papal infallibility ; and, if he 
could, the belief that such and such is the Papal 
utterance must come to all but the very smallest 
fraction of Roman Catholics upon the evidence of 
informants or Priests whom no one dreams to be 
infallible. And even if the utterance be in writing, 
who shall warrant the infallibility of human under- 
standing which shall infallibly receive infallible 
words in the sense in which they were uttered ? 
And the same reasoning applies in its degree to a 






v.] OBJECTIONS TO ANGLICAN ORDERS. 113 

Council also. So that, supposing infallibility to be 
lodged somewhere in the Church which commis- 
sions a ministry, the truth which that ministry is to 
propound must somewhere in its transmission to 
the ultimate recipient, pass through fallible medi- 
ators ; and thus no ministry could escape the ob- 
jection of a want of infallible certainty in the 
message delivered. 

4. The Grounds of the Sufficient Authority 
of the Message Committed to the Anglican 
Clergy — Religious faith, on its external and logical 
side, with which alone we are here concerned, must 
undoubtedly rest upon some infallible word of God, 
although human reasoning and testimony are neces- 
sarily also mixed up even with the original proof. 
The issue here raised, however, does not relate to 
the original foundation of the faith, but to its trans- 
mission to individual Christians as time goes on. 
And considering the actual conditions of human 
life in all practical questions, it is preposterous to 
say that religious truth must be propounded by an 
immediate infallible proponent. A message of God 
is not less a message of God to us, because he to 
whom it was first delivered told it to other men, 
and they to others, so that at length it reaches us 
through many links not infallible. It is obviously 
sufficient that we have moral certainty that the mes- 
sage as it comes to us is the same in all essentials 
as that which Christ gave to His Apostles when He 
bade them disciple all nations. 

Putting aside, then, this gratuitous a priori con- 
dition of a necessary formal infallibility in each 
several propounder of the faith, we inquire what 
actually is the nature of those links whereby it is 
transmitted to ourselves. 

First, there is the testimony of the Church con- 
sidered simply as a body of men whose numbers 
and position in time and place, and the universality 
3 



ii4 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION. [lect. 

of their testimony, and all the other circumstances 
that conspire to give weight to human evidence, 
make up when combined an overwhelming proof 
that certain books, a certain doctrine, and a certain 
discipline did actually come from Christ through 
His Apostles. 

Secondly, this doctrine and this discipline are 
guaranteed to us by the contents of those books 
themselves ; and, 

Thirdly, beyond this testimony there come the 
promises of the Saviour to be ever with His Church ; 
that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it ; 
that the Spirit shall lead the Apostles into all truth, 
etc. 

In view of these assurances no Christian can be- 
lieve that the whole Church can deliberately com- 
mit itself, absolutely and continuously, to funda- 
mental error in the faith ; or, in a less sphere, that 
the grace of God will not be proportionably with 
His ministers in accordance with their use of that 
grace. And, by the nature of the case, the free 
and deliberate determination of the whole Church, 
speaking, after full discussion, by the voice of its 
Bishops, and that voice finally and deliberately ac- 
cepted by the Church as a whole, must needs sup- 
ply the ultimate decision of controversies, because 
we can reach to no other. Doubtless Almighty 
God will not suffer such a determination to err in 
essentials. The decisions of the first and great 
Councils cf the Church, limited as they were to the 
testimony as to what the Church had always held, 
and what the Scriptures showed that the Apostles 
also had held, and accepted as they were by the uni- 
versal voice of the Church, possess so overwhelm- 
ing a force of conviction, as to make it morally 
impossible that they should in these fundamentals 
be erroneous. And in proportion to the univer- 
sality and moral weight of such declarations, does 






v.] OBJECTIONS TO ANGLICAN ORDERS. 115 

it become presumptuous for a particular part of 
the Church to suppose itself wiser than the whole 
Church, always, everywhere, and from the begin- 
ning. 

If, then, a Clergyman of this Church have no 
formally infallible and living oracle to consult on 
every emergent doubt ; and if this Church hold the 
Bishops of some particular time and place to have 
erred, even when in Council, because she sees that 
their determinations were against Scripture, how 
does this affect either the validity of the orders or 
the Divine nature of the message ? As regards 
fundamentals the proclamation is that of a message 
of Christ, and therefore a message infallibly true. 
Nor is that message less infallible because the 
preacher bids the disciples find it for themselves in 
Holy Scripture ; telling them, the while, first what 
it is, and next that the whole Church from the be- 
ginning has found it there ; and that if they study 
the Scriptures with humble use of the right means 
of understanding them, and with a readiness to ac- 
knowledge that the faith of God's people from the 
beginning cannot have been other than fundamen- 
tally right, they will certainly find it there for them- 
selves. 

FINIS. 



